by Merilyn Simonds ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
Do you believe what you see with your eyes or what you see with your heart? That question, raised by Simonds’ layered and...
A 96-year-old woman is forced to face corrosive truths about the past in Simonds’ (Gutenberg's Fingerprint, 2017, etc.) examination of the quest for certainty and its costs.
Born the ninth daughter to a rural Canadian farming family at the turn of the 20th century, Cass MacCallum becomes her father’s favored companion as he pursues his avocation of scientific observation and experimentation. A bout of tuberculosis, coupled with her growing interest and expertise in the natural sciences, leads Cass to a career in nursing. That vocation, in part, leads her to crisscross the Americas—Canada to Mexico City to New York—during the early part of the century, as the turbulence of world wars, labor disputes, and wars between border states unfold. When confronted with the possibility that a young Burmese woman seeking refugee status in Canada is actually the granddaughter of her beloved and long-lost son, and the only remaining connection to family she may still have, Cass must sift through decades of memories, photographs, and memorabilia before making a decision which will affect the course of not only her own life, but that of the determined young woman standing before her. Cass, whose devotion to the scientific method and powers of observation have carried her far from her provincial upbringing, must weigh the likelihood of patrimony versus opportunism when choosing how to proceed with the unexpected prospect of a familial relationship late in life. Cameo appearances from the likes of Frida Kahlo fill in the background in this portrait of a woman whose life paralleled some of the most tumultuous cultural and political events in modern times.
Do you believe what you see with your eyes or what you see with your heart? That question, raised by Simonds’ layered and nuanced account of an extraordinary life, will provoke thought in skeptics and believers alike.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77041-418-1
Page Count: 328
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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SEEN & HEARD
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SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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