This rich work—in all its (very real) glories, despite its (inevitable) longueurs—is the logical culmination of an obsession...
Bell’s heroically ambitious trilogy comes to a close as he delves into the concluding months of the Haitian Revolution, begun in 1791, and the final days of that island country’s black liberator, Toussaint Louverture.
As he did in its critically praised predecessors (All Souls’ Rising, 1995; Master of the Crossroads, 2000), Bell constructs his bulky narrative as a series of juxtapositions: military maneuverings and battlefield confrontations as experienced by Toussaint’s freed black soldiers on the one hand, and, on the other, troops led by France’s Generals Le Clerc and Rochambeau, entrusted with reestablishing slavery (despite Bonaparte’s contrary promises) and ordered to capture Louverture. Soldiers’ ordeals are both contrasted with, and related to, the lives of white plantation owners and their families, and omniscient narration is frequently interrupted by the voice of former slave (now Toussaint’s trusted lieutenant) Riau, one of the trilogy’s most complex and interesting characters. Others include stoical French doctor Antoine Hebert, long sympathetic to the former slaves’ plight; his beautiful, oversexed sister Esther Tocquet and her bosom friend Isabelle Cigny (whose privileged lives become increasingly endangered); planter Michel Arnaud and his imperious wife Claudine, whose horrific crime against a slave woman will not go unpunished; and Toussaint’s sons Placide and Isaac, first seen aboard a ship en route to Sainte Domingue to join their father, where only one will declare himself Toussaint’s ally. The story’s dimensions are further multiplied by flash-forwards to Toussaint’s imprisonment at Fort de Joux in the French Alps, where he ponders his great mission’s successes and failures, as he awaits the arrival of “Baron Samedi,” the Haitian avatar of death. At the very least, Bell’s willed masterpiece is a brilliant synthesis of historical fact and a consistently absorbing story. Readers who persevere through the trilogy’s almost 2,000 pages will be amply rewarded.
This rich work—in all its (very real) glories, despite its (inevitable) longueurs—is the logical culmination of an obsession with racial issues that has consistently dominated Bell’s fiction. As such, it merits the utmost attention and respect.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-42282-X
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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