Brown and Kelly create a richly detailed world, but need to more seamlessly marry facts with story.
Brown, with assistance from researcher and co-author Kelly, debuts with this historical novel of piracy and Colonial America.
Young Maria Hallett, having lost both her parents, works as a governess to her aunt’s children in early 18th-century Cape Cod. Her friend Isaac Doane is employed at the novel’s namesake tavern, and although he is enamored of Ms. Hallett, his shyness prevents him from becoming her suitor. But that’s not the case for historical pirate “Black Sam” Bellamy, who strides ashore, swiftly sweeps Maria off her feet and leaves her with child while he goes plundering in the West Indies for several months. By the time he returns to the coast of Massachusetts, circumstances have changed for the worse, as the child has passed away and Maria is being held criminally accountable. Although the real Bellamy died in a storm before reaching land, Brown and Kelly imagine what would have happened had he lived and found his way back into Maria’s life. The book’s often gorgeous descriptions and impressive vocabulary help bring the world of Colonial New England to life, through its flora, fauna, geography and people. The characters populating Brown and Kelly’s world, both fictional and fictionalized, are imbued with great depth. The authors’ zeal to bring so much of their vast research to the page, however, creates problems for the narrative, as the story is consistently interrupted by italicized sections of commentary, some of which reads like informational footnotes and all of which is distracting if not beside the point. And while scene-setting is essential to a book such as this, too often the plot is forced to sit still for it, and too much of the action—including most of the actual pirating—takes place off the page.
Brown and Kelly create a richly detailed world, but need to more seamlessly marry facts with story.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-1452082097
Page Count: 272
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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