Though sometimes buckling under its own weight, this sprawling tale will charm fans of historical romance.
When Mauro Larrea is bankrupted by a business deal shattered by the American Civil War, he embarks on a great adventure to build his fortunes anew.
From Mexico City to Havana to Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, Dueñas’ (The Heart Has Its Reasons, 2012, etc.) sweeping tale of fortunes made and lost abounds with dramatic characters and operatic plot twists. Damsels in distress, devious femme fatales, conniving gamblers—all beset Mauro on his quest to make enough money in four months to pay off the uxorious moneylender Tadeo Carrús. Mauro is a self-made man, shaped by working the silver mines of Mexico. Tenacious and shrewd, he swiftly learned how to gamble on shady financing that enabled him to found his own companies. Losing everything doesn’t frighten Mauro. Yet at 47, he has more than himself to worry about: his daughter, Mariana, can fend for herself, concealing the bankruptcy from her mother-in-law, the Countess of Colima, until Mauro’s fortunes turn again, but his son, Nicolás, has not yet married Teresita, the daughter of Don Gorostiza, and the scandal may ruin his prospects. Mauro’s plans to seek a lucrative business deal in Cuba are complicated immediately by the Countess’ meddling and by Don Gorostiza’s insistence that Mauro deliver a small fortune to his sister, Carola. Carola wants Mauro to secretly invest it for her in an unsavory deal, but Mauro balks. Meanwhile, her husband, Zayas, challenges him to a duel at the billiard table. At stake are access to Carola and the possession of an estate and vineyard in the south of Spain, an estate Zayas inherited from his cousin Luisito, who died abruptly. Soon Mauro owns the estate, which introduces him to not only the bewitching and enigmatic Soledad Montalvo, but also the mysteries of the Montalvo-Gorostiza family saga.
Though sometimes buckling under its own weight, this sprawling tale will charm fans of historical romance.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2453-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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