Jewell, a wry observer of human folly, delivers with this latest tale of loneliness and the lure of beautiful things.
Both witty and deeply moving, Jewell’s latest tale of a fractured family spans 30 years of Easter Sundays.
The Bird family lives a postcard-worthy life in the Cotswolds. Their garden cottage is filled with bric-a-brac and children’s drawings; father Colin is thoughtful; the two girls, Meg and Beth, and twin boys Rory and Rhys are clever, kind and muddy. And then there's mother Lorelei, the center of their bohemian universe, whose beauty and love of beautiful things hide darker obsessions that turn everything about their life into an unfathomable mess. The novel begins in 2011 as a grown Meg enters her childhood home. Lorelei has died of starvation, and Meg is down from London to sort things out. The house is impenetrable, filled with towers of newspapers, useless baubles and piles of ceaseless hoarding. It didn’t used to be that way—Meg remembers a bright childhood, in particular Easter Sundays in which an extended clan gathered for egg hunts and Lorelei’s brand of childlike magic. And then one Easter when Meg is 20, they find Rhys hanging from the rafters of his room. His suicide sinks everyone: Golden Rory runs off to a Spanish commune (and continues to run, until one day he ends up in a Thai prison); sensible Meg abandons her family for the new one she makes with Bill; Beth begins an illicit affair with Bill; and Lorelei forces Colin out so her new lover, Vicky, can move in. As Meg sorts through the rubbish, we are privy to Lorelei’s last correspondence to Jim, an Internet boyfriend to whom she confesses all her lonely secrets. Though Jewell's novels masquerade as breezy, they are unpredictable and emotionally complex.
Jewell, a wry observer of human folly, delivers with this latest tale of loneliness and the lure of beautiful things.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0299-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.
Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.
Alice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library—an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes (Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-56248-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Twisty and propulsive.
A first date takes a sinister turn for a troubled young woman in Walker’s third psychological thriller.
It’s the day after Laura Lochner’s date with a man she met online, and she hasn’t returned to the Connecticut home of her sister, Rosie, her brother-in-law, Joe, and their little boy, Mason, where she’s been staying after a bad breakup. Rosie fears the worst, but Joe advises caution. After all, Laura is an adult and can have some fun, right? But Rosie has a bad feeling. Laura won’t answer her phone, and Rosie only has more questions after poking around online for info on Laura’s date, Jonathan Fields. Rosie eventually calls the police, and events begin to cascade like dominoes. Interspersed with Rosie’s attempt to trace Laura’s movements and get a handle on the guy she went out with is Laura’s first-person account of the actual date as well as enlightening snippets of sessions between Laura and her therapist. Laura’s is the most compelling part—a tormented, often prickly piece of storytelling by a woman carrying the pain of a horrible event that happened in high school and feelings of abandonment by a father who always seemed to love Rosie more. Laura’s desire to be loved is all-consuming, but her conviction that she is not worthy of love is heartbreaking. She sees subterfuge in nearly everything Jonathan says and does. Meanwhile, Rosie must come to terms with some ugly surprises of her own as she digs into their past. As the timelines inevitably converge, Walker’s clever misdirection paves the way to a truly chilling finale, and she has plenty of insightful things to say about the blame placed on women by society and themselves for the idiotic, careless, and sometimes downright evil things men do.
Twisty and propulsive.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19867-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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