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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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