Once again, de Moor offers an enchantingly original novel. She’s getting better with every book.
From the internationally acclaimed Dutch author (First Gray, Then White, Then Blue, p. 979, etc.), a richly imagined, subtly constructed exploration of an unusual fictional subject: Europe’s gypsy populations and their adversarial relationships with settled societies.
Stage center is the marriage of Lucie, a beautiful Dutch woman who runs her family’s horse farm, and Joseph Plato, a charismatic nomad whose effortless empathy with all creatures domestic and wild (and also the ingenuous souls with whom he trades horses) is matched by the easy power he exerts over the smitten Lucie and their three children. Every spring, Joseph leaves his family to wander (belonging as he does to “a race of people with lungs so full of air that it simply has to escape”) across the continent; every fall, he returns, seemingly unchanged. Scenes from different stages of his courtship of Lucie, their union, and numerous separations and estrangements are shown from their viewpoints, as well as those of Lucie’s widowed, roughhewn father Gerard (who grudgingly admires the sleek, confident Joseph almost as much as he distrusts him) and of an unidentified narrator who seems, at various times, to be Joseph (observing himself as he observes others), Lucie’s sister, the voice of her village, and the omniscient author. Behind Joseph’s “story” (which is central) loom the travels, and travail of his people, recorded in tales told by his elders, the complex memories Gerard resists and compulsively recycles, and piecemeal historical information (invariably vividly dramatized). It’s a resonant, bittersweet history of romance and adventure, elaborate confidence games (e.g., itinerant public performances with a trained bear reputedly capable of “cur[ing] gout and tumors by laying on one of its paws”) and other strategies for survival, and the continuing threats (and the realities) of persecution and imprisonment.
Once again, de Moor offers an enchantingly original novel. She’s getting better with every book.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55970-546-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
He’s Ivo Maltravers, the proud English Duke of Wareham, currency poor but heritage wealthy; and she’s Cora Cash, if not...
A shrewd, spirited historical romance with flavors of Edith Wharton, Daphne du Maurier, Jane Austen, Upstairs, Downstairs and a dash of People magazine that charts a bumpy marriage of New World money and Old World tradition.
He’s Ivo Maltravers, the proud English Duke of Wareham, currency poor but heritage wealthy; and she’s Cora Cash, if not prejudiced then certainly a forthright modern girl who may be the richest American heiress of the late-Victorian era. Their engagement swiftly follows a hunting accident in England, and details of the marriage, such as her gold-and-diamond-trimmed corset and 90-couture-gown trousseau, fill the gossip magazines of the day. But once installed at Lulworth, Ivo’s vast country estate, Cora—like the heroine of Rebecca at Manderley—begins to feel a little out of her depth. The English are slippery, not least Ivo’s mother, the Double Duchess, and Ivo himself seems to be involved with the beautiful blond wife of another nobleman. British TV producer Goodwin’s debut, a knowing, judicious blend of Gilded Age extravagance, below-stairs perspective, delivered via Cora’s black maid, and sophisticated social tableaux, offers reader satisfaction. The marriage suffers its threats, and misunderstandings but a finale overlooking the crashing waves of a Dorset beach resolves matters with characteristic passion and maturity.Pub Date: June 21, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-65865-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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BOOK REVIEW
Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying: apparently there’s nothing Egan can’t do.
After stretching the boundaries of fiction in myriad ways (including a short story written in Tweets), Pulitzer Prize winner Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010, etc.) does perhaps the only thing left that could surprise: she writes a thoroughly traditional novel.
It shouldn’t really be surprising, since even Egan’s most experimental work has been rich in characters and firmly grounded in sharp observation of the society around them. Here, she brings those qualities to a portrait of New York City during the Depression and World War II. We meet 12-year-old Anna Kerrigan accompanying her adored father, Eddie, to the Manhattan Beach home of suave mobster Dexter Styles. Just scraping by “in the dregs of 1934,” Eddie is lobbying Styles for a job; he’s sick of acting as bagman for a crooked union official, and he badly needs money to buy a wheelchair for his severely disabled younger daughter, Lydia. Having rapidly set up these situations fraught with conflict, Egan flashes forward several years: Anna is 19 and working at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, the sole support of Lydia and their mother since Eddie disappeared five years earlier. Adult Anna is feisty enough to elbow her way into a job as the yard’s first female diver and reckless enough, after she runs into him at one of his nightclubs, to fall into a one-night stand with Dexter, who initially doesn’t realize whose daughter she is. Disastrous consequences ensue for them both but only after Egan has expertly intertwined three narratives to show us what happened to Eddie while drawing us into Anna’s and Dexter’s complicated longings and aspirations. The Atlantic and Indian oceans play significant roles in a novel saturated by the sense of water as a vehicle of destiny and a symbol of continuity (epigraph by Melville, naturally). A fatal outcome for one appealing protagonist is balanced by Shakespearean reconciliation and renewal for others in a tender, haunting conclusion.
Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying: apparently there’s nothing Egan can’t do.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1673-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
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