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Dangerous Dreams

While hampered by modern-day babbling about dream theory, this Colonial tale still delivers engaging characters and an...

A historical novel examines what might have happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

The author explores the fate of 16th-century English colonists on Roanoke Island (in what is now North Carolina). Abandoned by their captain, they fight Native Americans and hunger. Emily Colman, a comely lass, is courted by many men, including Hugh Tayler, an older colonist with a dubious past. In 2000, meanwhile, Allie O’Shay, a doctoral candidate in psychology, enlists the help of a professor to study her dreams about these settlers. Back in 16th-century America, her dreams reveal deteriorating conditions. Colonists and Native Americans commit atrocities against each other. When a Spanish man-of-war arrives off the coast, the settlers flee, only to endure a fatal shipwreck and an arduous overland trek. Settling near some friendly Chesapeake Indians, they rough it while awaiting help from England. Emily falls in love with a Lakota Sioux named Isna, who’s visiting the Chesapeakes. She discovers that Tayler is “evil to the core”—confirmed when he rapes her and tries to force her into marriage by threatening to kill her friend’s baby. Eventually, Isna wounds Tayler, who’s later killed by a war party of Powhatans on its way to wiping out the colonists. But Isna and Emily manage to escape. In the 21st century, Allie realizes she’s dreaming about her family’s history, just as some of her female forebears have done, and that they’re Isna and Emily’s descendants. This sprawling novel, based on Rhynard’s 1991 YA book with the same title, is ambitious but not completely successful. He’s at his best when describing 16th-century folkways, providing detailed accounts of everyday lives, down to making bayberry candles and pemmican. His main Colonial characters are well-drawn, and their story is engrossing, action-packed, and well-plotted. But weaving in modern-day Allie and telling the tale through the lens of her dreams becomes distracting. Allie’s storyline seems superfluous in a 785-page tome. Modern characters’ dialogue can be trite, and the 16th-century dialogue, though better, contains too much exposition and an occasional howler (a colonist crying, “Fate, shmate!”). Rhynard also exhibits an unfortunate weakness for clichés such as “the writing was on the wall” and overuses silly similes: “like a millipede stampede.” The novel would have worked better as a purely historical speculation.

While hampered by modern-day babbling about dream theory, this Colonial tale still delivers engaging characters and an energetic plot.

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5170-5484-7

Page Count: 798

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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SUMMER ISLAND

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

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