Inspired by an 18th-century murder case involving a milliner and her daughter, Purcell’s slightly flawed novel expertly...
A Victorian do-gooder meets a young seamstress, on trial for murder, who confesses to killing her employer with just a needle and thread.
Wealthy heiress Dorothea Truelove devotes her charitable work to visiting the female inmates of Oakgate Prison. When she receives a note from the prison matron informing her that “we [have] another one,” Dorothea is thrilled because this is her chance to prove her ideas about the science of phrenology. Convinced that a person’s character, including “the propensity to kill," is mapped out on the cranium, she is eager to interview her subject, 16-year-old Ruth Butterham, who stands accused of murdering her mistress, “slowly, by degrees.” With each visit, Ruth tells Dorothea the sad and brutal story of grinding poverty and devastating loss that led to her involuntary servitude and appalling abuse at the dressmaking shop of Mrs. Metyard and her daughter, Kate. A talented sewer, Ruth is convinced she has a supernatural ability to kill as she stitches her emotions into the garments she makes. Of her victims, some were accidents, she tells Dorothea, but others she hated, like Rosalind Oldacre, her tormentor from school, and the abusive Metyards. The rational Dorothea believes Ruth is lying, but the girl's phrenological profile reveals a “wonderfully retentive memory" and a tendency toward honesty. Meanwhile, Dorothea, who is secretly being courted by police constable David, must fend off her widowed father’s efforts to betrothe her to Sir Thomas Biggleswade. Purcell (The Silent Companions, 2017) cleverly plays two unreliable narrators off each other here. Ruth is more compellingly drawn, but Dorothea’s obsession with head bumps is downright creepy. Who is the dotty one? Unfortunately, the supporting characters are not as fully fleshed out, primarily serving as plot devices in the novel’s sudden and rather clunky climax.
Inspired by an 18th-century murder case involving a milliner and her daughter, Purcell’s slightly flawed novel expertly threads splashes of Grand Guignol violence with dark gothic atmosphere to make for a chilling and engrossing read.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313405-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.
Manhattan in the late 1930s is the setting for this saga of a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they meet in a jazz club are never the same after an auto accident.
Towles' buzzed-about first novel is an affectionate return to the post–Jazz Age years, and the literary style that grew out of it (though seasoned with expletives). Brooklyn girl Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse mate, Midwestern beauty Eve Ross, are expert flirts who become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker Tinker Grey. With him, they hit all the hot nightspots and consume much alcohol. After a milk truck mauls his roadster with the women in it, permanently scarring Eve, the guilt-ridden Tinker devotes himself to her, though he and she both know he has stronger feelings for Katey. Strong-willed Katey works her way up the career ladder, from secretarial job on Wall Street to publisher’s assistant at Condé Nast, forging friendships with society types and not allowing social niceties to stand in her way. Eve and Tinker grow apart, and then Kate, belatedly seeing Tinker for what he is, sadly gives up on him. Named after George Washington's book of moral and social codes, this novel documents with breezy intelligence and impeccable reserve the machinations of wealth and power at an historical moment that in some ways seems not so different from the current one. Tinker, echoing Gatsby, is permanently adrift. The novel is a bit light on plot, relying perhaps too much on description. But the characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is sharp and Towles avoids the period nostalgia and sentimentality to which a lesser writer might succumb.
An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.Pub Date: July 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02269-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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