The novel is brisk-paced and crowd-pleasing, but hardly brave.
The latest from Evans (The Divided, 2005, etc.), author of the blockbuster The Horse Whisperer (1995), ranges from a 1950s British boarding school to early-’60s Hollywood gossip to contemporary war crimes in Iraq.
As 1960 approaches at Ashlawn Preparatory, lonely Tommy Bedford, not yet ten, is a mostly inconspicuous boy teased for being a bedwetter. He feels exiled from home and especially from his beautiful, vivacious sister, a starlet who's just moved to Los Angeles to seek fame in film; his chief solace is an obsession with bold cowboy heroes, among them a small-screen gunslinger named Red McGraw. Tommy’s sister shows up on the redbrick campus in a stretch limo one day, squired by Ray Montane, the actor who plays Red. Soon after, Diane divulges a shocking secret—Tommy is not her brother but her son, conceived when she was a teen, and his aged parents are really grandparents—and she and Ray whisk Tommy to Hollywood to live with them. Inevitably, the sunny fantasy curdles, and Ray turns out not to be quite the square-jawed scourge of injustice he plays on television. Eventually, his poisonous jealousy results in an act of violence that, we learn in the book's opening scene, ends (not quite plausibly) with Diane being executed. Four decades later, ex-alcoholic Tom Bedford lives alone in Montana, soldiering on amid the wreckage of a marriage and a once-promising writing career. But when his estranged son, Danny, who enlisted in the Marines over Tom's objections, is charged with murder after a civilian massacre in Iraq, Tom—trying both to reconnect to his boy and to save him from conviction—is forced to acknowledge, and to do something about the toxic residue of, the secret he'd thought buried. Evans has put together a slick, well-constructed entertainment, but it often succumbs to cliché and grimly dogpaddles in the mainstream, never taking a risk.
The novel is brisk-paced and crowd-pleasing, but hardly brave.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-03378-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
IN THE NEWS
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
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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