While it’s sometimes verbose, this engrossing tale delivers plenty of 19th-century cultural details and a satisfying...
A historical novel weaves a complicated web of interlocking relationships as it shows the gruesomeness of the Civil War and the bitterness of the South’s defeat.
In 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War, Asa Young was committed to a “state lunatic asylum” for “drawing objects of morbid representation” and never speaking. Four years later, he is taken in by Lt. Col. Jameson and his wife, Agnes, in the hope they can “help him get back his wits.” Asa was one of the soldiers Jameson had written Agnes about after the Siege of Petersburg. Now Asa is suffering from PTSD. A deep understanding develops between Flora, the couple’s 10-year-old daughter, and Asa, with the child parenting the man: “Don’t forget to wipe your feet on the mat.” Asa is the thread that connects, in one way or another, the many characters, lengthy subplots, and themes that make up the complex narrative. There is Asa’s father, Neville, who worked on a whaling ship and, through a variety of misadventures, wound up in Australia. He is rescued by Mallabal, an Indigenous Australian who eventually comes to America, where he again faces racial discrimination. Then there are the ex-Confederate Timpson brothers, Lucas and Dennet, “a pair of dog-hungry drifters,” who trigger the novel’s denouement. Through effective battle-scene flashbacks, readers live through Asa’s traumas: his horror at hearing “the pitiful cries” of the wounded horses and seeing the “many crimson tributaries springing from limbs, severed and punctured.” Avery’s (The Fortune Teller, 2018) prose is often wordy, but it creates vivid images. Here is Asa setting an animal free: “He stood before the fence and placed the rabbit by the hole folding its ears down and then nudged the head through. It resisted, so he pushed it again.” As the subplots unfold, the author deftly portrays the harshness of life on a whaling vessel, the destruction of aboriginal culture in Australia, the plight of blacks in post-Civil War America, and even the fight for women’s suffrage. The story’s conclusion is both unpredictable and rewarding.
While it’s sometimes verbose, this engrossing tale delivers plenty of 19th-century cultural details and a satisfying surprise ending.Pub Date: May 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5439-6338-0
Page Count: 398
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.
Manhattan in the late 1930s is the setting for this saga of a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they meet in a jazz club are never the same after an auto accident.
Towles' buzzed-about first novel is an affectionate return to the post–Jazz Age years, and the literary style that grew out of it (though seasoned with expletives). Brooklyn girl Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse mate, Midwestern beauty Eve Ross, are expert flirts who become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker Tinker Grey. With him, they hit all the hot nightspots and consume much alcohol. After a milk truck mauls his roadster with the women in it, permanently scarring Eve, the guilt-ridden Tinker devotes himself to her, though he and she both know he has stronger feelings for Katey. Strong-willed Katey works her way up the career ladder, from secretarial job on Wall Street to publisher’s assistant at Condé Nast, forging friendships with society types and not allowing social niceties to stand in her way. Eve and Tinker grow apart, and then Kate, belatedly seeing Tinker for what he is, sadly gives up on him. Named after George Washington's book of moral and social codes, this novel documents with breezy intelligence and impeccable reserve the machinations of wealth and power at an historical moment that in some ways seems not so different from the current one. Tinker, echoing Gatsby, is permanently adrift. The novel is a bit light on plot, relying perhaps too much on description. But the characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is sharp and Towles avoids the period nostalgia and sentimentality to which a lesser writer might succumb.
An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.Pub Date: July 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02269-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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