An often delightful fantasy that will stick with readers long after they turn the last page.
A debut time-travel romance that romps through more than 200 years of history.
Audra Makenna Manning, born and bred in Tennessee, is a daydreamer. She has a great fondness for the music and movies of the 1940s as well as a passion for horses; she’s also socially awkward, much to the displeasure of her well-to-do paternal grandmother in New York City. In 2008, when Makenna is 19, her parents are killed in a motorcycle accident, and she decides to live with her nearby maternal grandfather, nicknamed “Pa,” whom she adores. On a horse farm, she gets a job tending horses and masters the art of trick riding. One evening, the son of the horse farm’s owner accosts her, so she escapes on her favorite steed, Quasar, and heads out into a storm. A spectacular flash of lightning stuns her senses, and she and her horse find themselves in a strange place: the year 1772. It seems that in the woods near Nashville, not far from Pa’s home, there’s a portal that allows travel through time. As Makenna tries to get her bearings, she meets Gabriel Christian, who warns her that a nearby band of Chickamauga warriors could be dangerous. Gabriel, an Englishman who moved to the American Colonies, is traveling with some partners, all intent upon staking land claims. Lost and befuddled, Makenna agrees to ride with them, hoping to find her way back home. The relationship that Taylor develops between Makenna and Gabriel is funny, sweet, and often cantankerous, although it takes a couple more time jumps before the possibility of romance develops. The time-travel plot construct also presents a fertile field for humorous miscommunication; when Makenna asks for a phone, for example, Gabriel says, “I am unfamiliar with that weaponry.” Taylor also makes great use of the cultural dissonance between a feisty 21st-century woman and a proper 18th-century gentleman. One leap brings the pair to 1863, and the author viscerally portrays the magnitude of suffering in the rural South during the Civil War. The surprise ending is pleasant, although it will require readers to willingly suspend their disbelief.
An often delightful fantasy that will stick with readers long after they turn the last page.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-5173-4
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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