A compulsively readable adventure yarn, all the more so for being based on real events.
A young stowaway becomes an integral part of Shackleton’s 1914 attempt to cross the South Pole.
With the help of some friends on board, 17-year-old Merce Blackboro sneaks aboard Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, bound for Antarctica during the early days of World War I, as it re-supplies in Argentina. Shackleton intends to become the first to cross the continent from sea to sea, via the pole. Soon after Endurance sets sail, Merce is discovered hiding in a supply locker. Despite giving him a vicious tongue-lashing, Shackleton is impressed by young Blackboro's verve and gives him a job helping in Endurance's galley, as well as making him his personal steward. However, spots on Shackleton’s ship were highly sought after, so there are those aboard who might begrudge Blackboro’s place among the crew, especially when Sir Ernest assigns him the relatively labor-free task of organizing his library while reading accounts of previous polar expeditions. Unfortunately for Shackleton and his crew, they make their attempt during a particularly chilly winter, and the Endurance is trapped by pack ice before ever reaching the continent. After being lost for 635 days, Shackleton must use all of his skills as a seasoned explorer—and as a leader—to get his crew safely home. Bonné (Wie Wir Verschwinden, 2009) has crafted a compelling adventure novel drawn from actual events. His characters live and breathe, as does the book's desolate setting, which draws the reader deep into Shackleton's frigid world. There is a stunning level of technical detail—of the ship, the crew, Shackleton's place in the history of Antarctic exploration, etc.—all of which does nothing to clutter or detract from the gripping narrative. Nor does the rather dreamlike language, which helps conjure the icily surreal world of the Antarctic. Even readers familiar with the historical events on which the book is based will find themselves turning pages to find out what happens next.
A compulsively readable adventure yarn, all the more so for being based on real events.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59020-140-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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