These three stories, recently published in book form in France, are the only remaining fiction previously untranslated into English from the great French writer (1903-87) best known for her brilliant historical novels and for being the only woman thus far inducted into the AcadÇmie Franáaise. All three pieces were written between 1927 and 1930, when Yourcenar was in her 20s. An illuminating account of their composition and evaluation of their quality appear in a helpful foreword contributed by Yourcenar's biographer, Josyane Savigneau. The stories themselves, meanwhile, are a mixed lot. ``A Blue Tale'' surmounts its central stylistic gimmicka setting whose objects are virtually all shades and varieties of the title colorby bathing in sensuous description the fablelike story of a group of merchants who travel to a Middle Eastern island kingdom to seek a ``cave of sapphires'' and are accordingly punished for their greed. This reads like something out of the Arabian Nights and bears strong similarities to the contents of one of Yourcenar's best later books, her Oriental Tales. ``The First Evening'' is of interest chiefly because it was originally conceived by the author's father and mentor, Michel de Crayencour, and later revised and completed by Yourcenar. It's an analytical look at the wedding trip of a sophisticated older man and his virginal second wife disturbed by the husband's memories of the mistress he has abandoned. Here and there, Yourcenar's wry aphoristic voice is heard (``No doubt she thought him handsome. This lack of taste annoyed him''). ``The Evil Spell'' analyzes the relations among Italian villagers who appeal to a ``healer'' to cure a dying woman believed to have been cursed by her romantic rival. Neither the story's leftist political subtext nor its contrived specificity about peasant superstition rescues it from condescension and triviality. Apprentice work, and very uneven, but a welcome addition nevertheless to the distinctive oeuvre of an important modern writer.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-226-96530-9
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It”...
Queen of the summer novel—how could she not be, with all her stories set on an island—Hilderbrand delivers a beguiling ninth (The Castaways, 2009, etc.), featuring romance and mystery on isolated Tuckernuck Island.
The Tate family has had a house on Tuckernuck (just off the coast of swanky Nantucket) for generations. It has been empty for years, but now Birdie wants to spend a quiet mother-daughter week there with Chess before Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan. Then the unthinkable happens—perfect Chess (beautiful, rich, well-bred food editor of Glamorous Home) dumps the equally perfect Michael. She quits her job, leaves her New York apartment for Birdie’s home in New Canaan, and all without explanation. Then the unraveling continues: Michael dies in a rock-climbing accident, leaving Chess not quite a widow, but devastated, guilty, unreachable in the shell of herself. Birdie invites her younger daughter Tate (a pretty, naïve computer genius) and her own bohemian sister India, whose husband, world-renowned sculptor Bill Bishop, killed himself years ago, to Tuckernuck for the month of July, in the hopes that the three of them can break through to Chess. Hunky Barrett Lee is their caretaker, coming from Nantucket twice a day to bring groceries and take away laundry (idyllic Tuckernuck is remote—no phone, no hot water, no ferry) as he’s also inspiring renewed lust in Tate, who has had a crush on him since she was a kid. The author jumps between the four women—Tate and her blossoming relationship with Barrett, India and her relationship with Lula Simpson, a painter at the Academy where India is a curator, Birdie, who is surprised by the recent kindnesses of ex-husband Grant, and finally Chess, who in her journal is uncoiling the sordid, sad circumstances of her break with normal life and Michael’s death.
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It” beach book of the summer.Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-04387-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.
Pub Date: April 14, 1939
ISBN: 0143039431
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939
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