Pearce (The Two Farms, 1986, etc.)—evocator of 19-century England's rapidly industrializing, erratically democratizing rural villages and towns—again chronicles the rise of a working-class lad of pluck and luck; the constancy of initially unattainable love; and the wreckage caused by greed and ambition out of scale with the place and the times. Fifteen-year-old Martin Cox's life was changed the day he accompanied his miserly, mean-spirited father Rufus, stonemason and quarryman, for the last bit of work on the fine estate of Newton Railes. The house's impecunious, genial owner, John Tarrent, waffling on the bill, offered Martin (at Rufus's hint) tutoring with his twins, Hugh and Ginny, and the ``tutor,'' sweet and sensible elder daughter Katharine. Rufus, whose own children, Martin and Nan, lived in squalor and near starvation, expected learning to help the business. But Martin is captivated by the learning, the kindly people, the beautiful surroundings—and by Katharine. Then three deaths mark an era's end: Hugh dies in a fire, John soon after; and Rufus is killed in an accident, leaving, to Martin's rage, a near-fortune. Martin's rise is steady as he expands the stone-and-quarry business. Meanwhile, Katharine has married proud cloth mill-owner Charles, whose dangerous overreach costs him his mill and Newton Railes. Humiliated, he leaves for America and seems to have disappeared for good. Martin buys the house at Railes and offers Katharine a face-saving job as housekeeper. Three years later, though, the happy household is destroyed when Charles returns—wilder than ever. Still, there's a discreetly happy ending. Set to the rhythm of the looms and the pounding excitement of enterprise: a comfortable tale, at a country pace, of virtue rewarded and gentle pleasures.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-10514-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.
Walker (In Love and Trouble, Meridian) has set herself the task of an epistolary novel—and she scores strongly with it.
The time is in the Thirties; a young, black, Southern woman named Celie is the primary correspondent (God being her usual addressee); and the life described in her letters is one of almost impossible grimness. While young, Celie is raped by a stepfather. (Even worse, she believes him to be her real father.) She's made to bear two children that are then taken away from her. She's married off without her consent to an older man, Albert, who'd rather have Celie's sister Nettie—and, by sacrificing her body to Albert without love or feeling, Celie saves her sister, making it possible for her to escape: soon Nettle goes to Africa to work as a Christian missionary. Eventually, then, halfway through the book, as Celie's sub-literate dialect letters to God continue to mount (eventually achieving the naturalness and intensity of music, equal in beauty to Eudora Welty's early dialect stories), letters from Nettie in Africa begin to arrive. But Celie doesn't see them—because Albert holds them back from her. And it's only when Celie finds an unlikely redeemer—Albert's blues-singer lover Shug Avery—that her isolation ends: Shug takes Celie under her wing, becomes Celie's lover as well as Albert's; Shug's strength and expansiveness and wisdom finally free up Nettie's letters—thus granting poor Celie a tangible life in the now (Shug's love, encouragement) as well as a family life, a past (Nettie's letters). Walker fashions this book beautifully—with each of Celie's letters slowly adding to her independence (the implicit feminism won't surprise Walker's readers), with each letter deepening the rich, almost folk-tale-ish sense of story here. And, like an inverted pyramid, the novel thus builds itself up broadeningly while balanced on the frailest imaginable single point: the indestructibility—and battered-ness—of love.
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.Pub Date: June 28, 1982
ISBN: 0151191549
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1982
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Shalvis’ latest retains her spark and sizzle.
Piper Manning is determined to sell her family’s property so she can leave her hometown behind, but when her siblings come back with life-changing secrets and her sexy neighbor begins to feel like “The One,” she might have to redo her to-do list.
As children, Piper and her younger siblings, Gavin and Winnie, were sent to live with their grandparents in Wildstone, California, from the Congo after one of Gavin’s friends was killed. Their parents were supposed to meet them later but never made it. Piper wound up being more of a parent than her grandparents, though: “In the end, Piper had done all the raising. It’d taken forever, but now, finally, her brother and sister were off living their own lives.” Piper, the queen of the bullet journal, plans to fix up the family’s lakeside property her grandparents left the three siblings when they died. Selling it will enable her to study to be a physician’s assistant as she’s always wanted. However, just as the goal seems in sight, Gavin and Winnie come home, ostensibly for Piper’s 30th birthday, and then never leave. Turns out, Piper’s brother and sister have recently managed to get into a couple buckets of trouble, and they need some time to reevaluate their options. They aren’t willing to share their problems with Piper, though they’ve been completely open with each other. And Winnie, who’s pregnant, has been very open with Piper’s neighbor Emmitt Reid and his visiting son, Camden, since the baby’s father is Cam’s younger brother, Rowan, who died a few months earlier in a car accident. Everyone has issues to navigate, made more complicated by Gavin and Winnie’s swearing Cam to secrecy just as he and Piper try—and fail—to ignore their attraction to each other. Shalvis keeps the physical and emotional tension high, though the siblings’ refusal to share with Piper becomes tedious and starts to feel childish.
Shalvis’ latest retains her spark and sizzle.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296139-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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