by Mary Kay Abbott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 2017
An often moving story about the corrosive power of shame.
In Abbott’s (Pearl of Baxter Grove, 2009, etc.) novel set in the 1950s, a 16-year-old girl discovers a diary and becomes obsessed with deciphering a cryptic entry within it.
Emma Lankersham grew up on the Murphy Manor in Oklahoma, as her father, Jack, was the property’s foreman, employed by Geraldine Murphy, the estate’s owner. Emma stumbles upon a diary in the loft of a barn, and in it, she discovers an enigmatic lament about a motherless infant. Emma has no idea to whom the diary belongs or to whom the entry refers, but she’s intent on finding out. Later, she discovers another clue—a cookie cutter with a tag that has the name “Gwendolyn” inscribed on it. She has no recollection of anyone ever mentioning that name in the house, and everyone whom she asks about it stonewalls her. The reader quickly learns that Geraldine’s husband, J.T., a wildly successful businessman, was also a horrid man and philanderer, and that their union was a fraught and loveless one. Meanwhile, Emma falls in love with Hank Thompson, Geraldine’s grandson, but Geraldine forbids any relationship between them due to the insuperability of their class divide and the embarrassment of having to explain Emma’s congenital disfigurement, affecting two toes on her left foot. Geraldine treats her staff, some of whom are descendants of slaves, with savage disregard—a despotism caused in part by her own suffering and the weight of the secrets she bears. Macie Mae, a servant who grew up on the estate and Emma’s best friend, bears Geraldine’s venom with equanimity, although she knows more about Murphy Manor’s past than she’s willing to share. The author intelligently captures the precarious position of African-American laborers in the mid-20th century, who were legally free but limited by white people’s prejudices and their own poverty. The writing is clear and sometimes powerful, and the characters, particularly Macie Mae, are deeply developed. Abbott also deftly depicts the social significance of reputation, which could be of extraordinary utility to women of the time but could also be used as a weapon against them. The author tells the story from an omniscient, third-person perspective, and reveals early on that the house is haunted by two scandalous secrets, both of which Geraldine zealously protects. However, these two secrets soon become a source of tedium, due to seemingly incessant references to them; the power of the mystery is only diminished by the relentless discussion of it. Further, the transformation of Geraldine’s character, late in the novel, happens too fast and too completely to be plausible. Hank, meanwhile, is depicted as weak and entitled, which makes it difficult to understand why Emma falls for him. Still, despite these flaws, this remains an emotionally affecting tale overall. Emma is a beautifully drawn character, humbled by her disability but not without pride. She hunts for the truth, regardless of the consequences—some of which prove to be a heavy weight on her shoulders.
An often moving story about the corrosive power of shame.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5470-4945-5
Page Count: 350
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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