Part history lesson, part dramatic interpretation, this narrative sheds light on a time of fascinating conflict.
The second installment in Storm’s (From Africanus, 2015, etc.) historical-fiction trilogy about Byzantine aspirations abroad.
It is June 455 BCE, Roman emperor Petronius Maximus been murdered, and Rome is in great danger. With King Gaiseric and his Vandals literally at the gates of the city, the only hope comes from Pope Leo I and his ability to negotiate. He manages to talk the barbarians down to a mere sacking as opposed to an all-out slaughter; nonetheless, the Vandals plunder Rome for “fourteen days and fourteen nights.” It’s a tragic time for the once-great Romans, and it’s also an event that’s not forgotten in Constantinople. Fast-forward to the reign of Justinian I, emperor of Byzantium. Gen. Belisarius, who helped the Roman emperor contain the Nika Riots in the first book of this series, is sent with “the largest fleet Rome had assembled in over a century” to Caput Vada and beyond. His wife Antonina comes along as well, “like a falcon to the hunt,” and all parties seem ready for a historically epic conflict. Jam-packed with factual intrigue, most readers will certainly learn a lot about this often neglected period in history. Those with a cursory understanding of ancient Rome will likely know of Carthage from the days of the Punic Wars, but what of the city’s standing in the centuries that followed? That said, the dissemination of such information can periodically take on the tone of a lecture, if not a textbook, as when a character asks aloud, “Why were the Vandals and Goths so different? Why was their arrival so destructive?” However, much of the story is well-paced, avoiding the tangents that often plague accounts of bygone eras.
Part history lesson, part dramatic interpretation, this narrative sheds light on a time of fascinating conflict.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-51-167675-5
Page Count: 326
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although this novel’s reach exceeds its grasp, it is a necessary book.
On an island off the South Korean coast, an ancient guild of women divers reckons with the depredations of modernity from 1938 to 2008 in See's (The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, 2017, etc.) latest novel.
The women divers of Jeju Island, known as haenyeo, don't display the usual female subservience. Empowered by the income they derive from their diving, harvesting seafood to consume and sell, haenyeo are heads of households; their husbands mind the children and do menial chores. Young-sook, See’s first-person narrator and protagonist, tells of her family and her ill-fated friendship with Mi-ja, who, rescued from neglectful relatives by Sun-sil, Young-sook’s mother, is initiated into the diving collective headed by Sun-sil. The girls grow up together, dive together, and go on lucrative assignments in the freezing waters near Vladivostok, Russia. They are also married off together, Mi-ja to Sang-mun, who, as World War II progresses, is enriched by collaborating with the Japanese, and Young-sook to Jun-bu, a neighbor and childhood playmate. The novel’s first half is anecdotal and a little tedious as the minutiae of the haenyeo craft are explored: free diving, pre-wetsuit diving garb, and sumbisori, the art of held breath. As two tragedies prove, the most prized catches are the riskiest: octopus and abalone. See did extensive research with primary sources to detail not only the haenyeo traditions, but the mass murders on Jeju beginning in 1948, which were covered up for decades by the South Korean government. As Jeju villages are decimated, Young-sook loses half her family and also, due to a terrible betrayal, her friendship with Mi-ja. The tangled web of politics and tyranny, not to mention the inaction of U.N. and American occupiers leading up to the massacres, deserves its own work, perhaps nonfiction. In the context of such horrors, the novel’s main source of suspense, whether Young-sook can forgive Mi-ja, seems beside the point.
Although this novel’s reach exceeds its grasp, it is a necessary book.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5485-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chicana writer Castillo (whose reputation until now has been mostly regional) brings a warm, sometimes biting but not bitter feminist consciousness to the wondrous, tragic, and engaging lives of a New Mexico mother and her four fated daughters. Poor Sofi! Abandoned by her gambler husband to raise four unusual girls who tend to rise from adversity only to find disaster. ``La Loca,'' dead at age three, comes back to life—but is unable to bear the smell of human beings; Esperanza succeeds as a TV anchorwoman—but is less successful with her exploitative lover and disappears during the Gulf War; promiscuous, barhopping Caridad—mutilated and left for dead—makes a miraculous recovery, but her life on earth will still be cut short by passion; and the seemingly self-controlled Fe is so efficient that ``even when she lost her mind [upon being jilted]...she did it without a second's hesitation.'' Sofi's life-solution is to found an organization M.O.M.A.S. (Mothers of Martyrs and Saints), while Castillo tries to solve the question of minority-writer aesthetics: Should a work of literature provide a mirror for marginalized identity? Should it celebrate and preserve threatened culture? Should it be politically progressive? Should the writer aim for art, social improvement, or simple entertainment? Castillo tries to do it all—and for the most part succeeds. Storytelling skills and humor allow Castillo to integrate essaylike folklore sections (herbal curing, saint carving, cooking)—while political material (community organizing, toxic chemicals, feminism, the Gulf War) is delivered with unabashed directness and usually disarming charm.
Pub Date: April 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03490-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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