WE FIVE

Name: WE FIVE
Author: Mark Dunn
ISBN: 978-1-938103-12-4

by Mark Dunn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 27, 2015

A fire, an earthquake, a bombing, a long-lost brother, some gay and lesbian intrigue, a few near deaths and a few more...

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A novel of female friendship and destabilizing romance that spans decades and continents.

Dunn (Under the Harrow, 2010, etc.) has created a patchwork narrative by weaving together five different versions of the same story, which supposedly originated in a posthumous novel by Elizabeth Gaskell which is then rewritten by four different authors in different places and times. They all tell the story of five young women whose long-lasting friendship has joined them in a kind of sisterhood and the five young suitors who pursue them to variously disastrous ends. The tale hops from a small mill town near Manchester, England, in 1859; to San Francisco in 1906; to Sinclair Lewis' fictional Zenith, Winnemac, in 1923; to London during the Blitz of 1940; to a small Mississippi town in 1997. Jumping among the five settings as the story unfolds, the novel manages to preserve each woman’s distinct personality despite the regional differences and shifts in prose style. Soon, the narrative swivels from a jaunty examination of female bonding to a series of harrowing events sprung from the passions of the women and their suitors. A thematic throughline begins to appear: that of men’s propensity for violence, which can result in actions both forgivable (a brother defends his sister’s honor) and indefensible (a hothead abuses a prostitute in place of the woman he really wants to punish). But Dunn fails to carry this observation to a place where we might glean any real insight into human behavior. While he pulls off his exercise in pastiche, the reader finishes the tale wondering what exactly was the point of all that time travel.

A fire, an earthquake, a bombing, a long-lost brother, some gay and lesbian intrigue, a few near deaths and a few more actual ones: the plot will carry you swiftly through the book, but by the end, it deposits you on shaky ground.

Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-938103-12-4

Page Count: 280

Publisher: Dzanc

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
UNDER THE HARROW
by Mark Dunn

- BOOK REVIEW
IBID: A LIFE
by Mark Dunn

- BOOK REVIEW
WELCOME TO HIGBY
by Mark Dunn

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WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

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Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Hulu’s ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Adds To Cast

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SHOGUN

by James Clavell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 1975

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In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.