Lush and lurid, as are its sultry settings: an intricate brocade conceals its blemishes, seducing the reader with silken...
Human sacrifice, never a good thing, wreaks spectacular havoc in the author’s latest Caribbean gothic.
In the 1880s, an infant is found on Guadeloupe with its throat slit, not an isolated phenomenon on this isle where the demons cultivated for personal and political gain prefer babies as sacrificial victims. Kindly but debauched Dr. Jean Pinceau (aping his hero, Dr. Frankenstein) reattaches Celanire’s head and adopts her. After goading her adoptive mother fatally into the jaws of a mysterious black dog, Celanire attempts to seduce Pinceau, who is wrongfully convicted of child rape and exiled to the penal colony of French Guiana. And that’s just her first ten years. Entrusted to nuns, Celanire is educated in France and travels as a missionary to colonial Ivory Coast. A beauty whose swan neck is never without scarf, necklace, or ribbon, Celanire captivates both sexes as she sets about revamping a home for illegitimate children, turning it into an elite academy by day, salon/bordello by night. Anyone who resists her charisma, like the hapless homosexual Hakim, is doomed, as is anyone she finds inconvenient. On the surface, Celanire is an envoy of civilization who cultivates elaborate gardens and rails against female circumcision and oppression of women. Wrested back from sacrifice, she’s the double-agent of the unpropitiated demon-gods. Her acts serve twin mandates: to avenge herself on everyone connected to the sacrifice, and to discover her true parentage. The action spans four tropical climes: Africa, Guiana, Guadeloupe (where the former foundling returns in grim triumph as the governor’s wife), and Peru, where an exorcism of sorts occurs. The body count mounts as do Celanire’s shape-shifting forms—large mastiffs, a stallion, a raptor bird, and—a waitress? Condé (Tales From the Heart, 2001,etc) sets herself a fearsome challenge: an implacable trickster can hardly engage our sympathy, despite her cultivated veneer.
Lush and lurid, as are its sultry settings: an intricate brocade conceals its blemishes, seducing the reader with silken irony.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-8260-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
IN THE NEWS
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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