Sure to ignite controversy among Jamesians.
London-born author Jones’ novel explores the troubled relationship of an American expatriate novelist and his cousin, a charming orphan infected with tuberculosis.
A fictional character based on Minny Temple, impoverished cousin of Henry James and model for many of his female protagonists, Emily Hudson is orphaned at 16 when her family succumbs to consumption. Forced back on the tender mercies of her uncle, straitlaced Boston theologian William Cornford, she’s packed off to boarding school, but soon expelled, in 1861, for being too outspoken. Emily rejoins the Cornfords, who openly despise her, except for cousin William, a sickly, scholarly young man already making literary waves in Boston. After Emily scuttles her marriage prospects by rejecting dashing and wealthy Captain Lindsay, a Union officer, her uncle disowns her, but William asks her to accompany him to London, where, with his financial backing, she will be free to pursue her ambition to study painting. In London, William distances himself from Emily, except for weekly dinners at which he doles out her stipend. An aristocratic acquaintance, Caroline Trelawney, helps Emily negotiate a young lady’s entrée into London society—in some ways freer, in others more oppressive toward women than Boston’s. Narrowly escaping the clutches of attractive roué Lord Firle, Emily eventually exhausts William’s patience with her utter heedlessness. (Apparently, he’s unable to discard the puritanical social mores he aspired to escape in Europe.) Not only does Emily get Caroline to pose in deshabille, she runs out in a storm, triggering a tubercular attack, and embarrasses William by dressing down an anti-American dinner guest. Fleeing to Rome, Emily finally achieves autonomy as a woman and an artist. This partially epistolary novel (Emily corresponds with her school friend Augusta, Caroline and William’s dour but deep sister Mary, among others) renders Emily and her mostly harmless foibles believable, but William remains a cipher.
Sure to ignite controversy among Jamesians.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02180-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella,...
A deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella, but because the setup seems generic. A black soldier returns from the Korean War, where he faces a rocky re-entry, succumbing to alcoholism and suffering from what would subsequently be termed PTSD. Yet perhaps, as someone tells him, his major problem is the culture to which he returns: “An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.” Ultimately, the latest from the Nobel Prize–winning novelist has something more subtle and shattering to offer than such social polemics. As the novel progresses, it becomes less specifically about the troubled soldier and as much about the sister he left behind in Georgia, who was married and deserted young, and who has fallen into the employ of a doctor whose mysterious experiments threaten her life. And, even more crucially, it’s about the relationship between the brother and his younger sister, which changes significantly after his return home, as both of them undergo significant transformations. “She was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine,” thinks the soldier. He discovers that “while his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.” As his sister is becoming a woman who can stand on her own, her brother ultimately comes to terms with dark truths and deep pain that he had attempted to numb with alcohol. Before they achieve an epiphany that is mutually redemptive, even the earlier reference to “dogs” reveals itself as more than gratuitous.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-59416-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
This is historical adventure on a grand scale, right up there with the works of Conn Iggulden and Minette Walters.
Plenty of gore from days of yore fills the 12th entry in Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom series (War of the Wolf, 2018, etc.).
The pagan warlord Uhtred of Bebbanburg narrates his 10th-century adventures, during which he hacks people apart so that kingdoms might be stitched together. He is known to some as the Godless or the Wicked, a reputation he enjoys. Edward, King of Wessex, Mercia, and East Anglia is gravely ill, and Uhtred pledges an oath to likely heir Æthelstan to kill two rivals, Æthelhelm and “his rotten nephew,” Ælfweard, when the king dies. Uhtred’s wife, Eadith, wants him to break that oath, but he cannot live with the dishonor of being an oathbreaker. The tale seems to begin in the middle, as though the reader had just turned the last page in the 11th book—and yet it stands alone quite well. Uhtred travels the coast and the river Temes in the good ship Spearhafoc, powered by 40 rowers struggling against tides and currents. He and his men fight furious battles, and he lustily impales foes with his favorite sword, Serpent-Breath. “I don’t kill the helpless,” though, which is one of his few limits. So, early in the story, when a man calling himself “God’s chosen one” declares “We were sent to kill you,” readers may chuckle and say yeah, right. But Uhtred faces true challenges such as Waormund, “lord Æthelhelm’s beast.” Immense bloodletting aside, Cornwell paints vivid images of the filth in the Temes and in cities like Lundene. This is mainly manly fare, of course. Few women are active characters. The queen needs rescuing, and “when queens call for help, warriors go to war.” The action is believable if often gruesome and loathsome, and it never lets up for long.
This is historical adventure on a grand scale, right up there with the works of Conn Iggulden and Minette Walters.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256321-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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