An unusual, gripping period novel from a much-honored Canadian writer.
Orphaned and alone in 1800s Newfoundland, a young brother and sister contend with the dire hazards of their coastal surroundings and their own strange physical awakenings.
Evered, 11 at the start of this epic, and Ada, two years younger, have in short order lost their parents and their newborn sister to illness. Their childhood largely denied them—Evered's hair turns white after burying his father at sea—the siblings must overcome food shortages, bone-chilling cold, ferocious storms, temporary blindness caused by exposure to the vast ice field, sickness, and the occasional wandering bear. They live for the next visit from The Hope, a schooner that arrives every six months to trade food staples and supplies for cod. Between visits, they take great risks to find food sources and, on a wrecked ship outside the cove, warm clothes. Nestled up against each other for warmth, Evered and Ada sleep in the same bed, an arrangement that will open them to a world of mysteries they never knew existed. Watch out for the drunken shipmen from The Hope looking the teenage Ada over. Crummey, whose distinctive vision informed the Newfoundland stories in Galore (2011) and Sweetland (2015), writes in a style consistent with the period. (Those tired of the usual phrases for lovemaking might try "They two joined giblets.") But the book's central image—the traumatizing sight of naked dead bodies in the hold of a wrecked ship—shocks in a contemporary way. And Crummey's refusal to go where you might expect—the offbeat humor can catch you by surprise—provides page-turning pleasures. You can't wait to see what happens next.
An unusual, gripping period novel from a much-honored Canadian writer.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54542-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of...
Orange’s debut novel offers a kaleidoscopic look at Native American life in Oakland, California, through the experiences and perspectives of 12 characters.
An aspiring documentary filmmaker, a young man who has taught himself traditional dance by watching YouTube, another lost in the bulk of his enormous body—these are just a few of the point-of-view characters in this astonishingly wide-ranging book, which culminates with an event called the Big Oakland Powwow. Orange, who grew up in the East Bay and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, knows the territory, but this is no work of social anthropology; rather, it is a deep dive into the fractured diaspora of a community that remains, in many ways, invisible to many outside of it. “We made powwows because we needed a place to be together,” he writes. “Something intertribal, something old, something to make us money, something we could work toward, for our jewelry, our songs, our dances, our drum.” The plot of the book is almost impossible to encapsulate, but that’s part of its power. At the same time, the narrative moves forward with propulsive force. The stakes are high: For Jacquie Red Feather, on her way to meet her three grandsons for the first time, there is nothing as conditional as sobriety: “She was sober again,” Orange tells us, “and ten days is the same as a year when you want to drink all the time.” For Daniel Gonzales, creating plastic guns on a 3-D printer, the only lifeline is his dead brother, Manny, to whom he writes at a ghostly Gmail account. In its portrayal of so-called “Urban Indians,” the novel recalls David Treuer’s The Hiawatha, but the range, the vision, is all its own. What Orange is saying is that, like all people, Native Americans don’t share a single identity; theirs is a multifaceted landscape, made more so by the sins, the weight, of history. That some of these sins belong to the characters alone should go without saying, a point Orange makes explicit in the novel’s stunning, brutal denouement. “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them,” James Baldwin wrote in a line Orange borrows as an epigraph to one of the book’s sections; this is the inescapable fate of every individual here.
In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of America itself.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52037-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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