An ambitious, intricately composed novel of medieval siblings.
In Cacciari’s debut medieval drama, a lord’s impending death ignites a volatile relationship between a brother and sister.
In the early 12th century, Reiner d’Ivry leaves the monastery, where he’s spent the better half of his childhood, to see to his dying father, the Lord of Sundorgate. Reiner soon learns that he’s been presumed dead and that his sister, Drusiana, is their father’s heir. She says she’ll relinquish her inheritance if Reiner leaves the cloister and stays in Sundorgate. Reiner, however, is determined to marry Drusiana off to a son of their father’s comrade-in-arms. The novel doesn’t offer a magical medieval tale with dragons, knights and clanking swords but a more realistic story of feuding siblings. Readers may find it much easier to sympathize with Drusiana, despite Reiner’s first-person perspective (presented as a confession to a fellow monk). Her reluctance to wed comes across as practical and almost endearing, as she cuts her hair short and dresses as a male. Her brother, meanwhile, is desperate to prove that Drusiana is insane or has a lover, and he slowly becomes deranged himself. His fierce account is often unnerving, as when he breaks into laughter when kneeling to pray and, at his lowest point, drops a rat into a pie that someone later eats. Readers may find it a challenge to follow such a frantic protagonist, but there’s a short reprieve when Reiner returns to the monastery. He soon learns why Drusiana hasn’t sought a potential husband, and the story takes a gleefully dark turn. Cacciari steeps the narrative in the language of its era, so readers with a fear of medieval dialect may want to steer clear, but others will appreciate how the dialogue shuns modernization. Others will be swayed by Reiner’s haunting, ominous moments (“I had shut my eyes as a child and awakened an old man.”). The novel also includes glossaries with Latin translations.
An ambitious, intricately composed novel of medieval siblings.Pub Date: March 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615679969
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Bernician
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2013
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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