impressively knowledgeable, and very moving historical novel.
A richly satisfying debut, comparable in many ways to Andrea Barrett's The Voyage of the Narwhal, that uses nearly 20
carefully distinguished voices to tell the convoluted story of a 19th-century expedition to Tasmania and a stalemated conflict between "civilization" and "savagery." It's heavy going at first. In 1857, Captain Illian Kewley blandly relates the misadventures of the ship he commands, the (rather grandly named) Sincerity, seized for smuggling, then "put up for charter," and hired to sail to Tasmania by an unlikely pair of "passengers." Reverend Geoffrey Wilson aims to disprove the claims of geology by demonstrating that the biblical Garden of Eden did exist: on this remote island off Australia's southern coast. His partner, Dr. Thomas Potter, motivated by what Potter terms "scientific interest," seeks evidence to support his notion that Tasmanian aborigines represent "the very lowest of all the races—or species—of men, being bereft of even the most rudimentary skills." The answer to Dr. Potter's theory emerges in several narratives dating from 1820 and thereafter, in which we meet a number of Tasmania's colonial governing officials and their families; "sealer" (and sailor) Jack Harp, for whom aboriginal women are sexual game ripe to be taken; and, most importantly, a wily native named Peevay, whose intimacy with the "visiting" English will test his people's innate gentleness and threaten their very existence, and Peevay's choleric "Mother," who swears revenge on the white men who have abused her (and, in fact, becomes a kind of warrior queen whom her white educators will, in their innocence, rename "Boadicea"). Kneale blends together their several stories adroitly, in a suspenseful piecemeal narrative that climaxes when those begun in the 1820s extend 30 years into the future, the "English passengers" arrive at the port of Hobart, and the destinies of two opposed cultures inexorably work themselves out. Despite minor echoes of Great Expectations and Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith: an original,
impressively knowledgeable, and very moving historical novel.Pub Date: March 14, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-49743-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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