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
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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