A lively twist on the historical fiction genre by a promising author.
Cold Case meets Ghost Whisperer in Camalliere’s debut mystery.
A capricious spirit, a mysterious wolf, and a 100-year-old unsolved triple homicide lead Cora Tozzi on a journey to uncover the history of Sag Bridge. Lemont, the tiny village, nowadays melded into the Chicago suburb where Cora and her husband, Cisco, live, was a hub of activity in the late 1800s during the building of canals that would link the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. Retired, Cora devotes her time to the library, the historical society, a book club, and other assorted committees. She also hides a secret. Throughout her life, one that she herself describes as quite fortunate, Cora has had the sense that some sort of supernatural entity has been watching over her. A door closing unexpectedly, a paper clip flying across the room, all signaled the presence of “something.” Cora began calling this presence “Angel.” But lately, the previously playful Angel has been gaining strength and exhibiting some dangerously angry behavior. Is Angel responsible for the bizarre accident that left a hostile member of Cora’s book club fighting for her life? Is she demanding something specific from Cora? And why did Angel attach herself to Cora in the first place? In her search for answers, Cora learns of the century-old murder of a young couple and their newborn baby girl. In 1898, the bludgeoned bodies of Meg and Packey Hennessey were discovered in the graveyard of Saint James Catholic Church, their newborn lying atop Meg with her umbilical cord still attached. Nobody was ever charged for the crime. Camalliere peppers her narrative with well-drawn depictions of life in turn-of-the-last-century Sag Bridge, and her characters are rather charming. Readers, however, will figure out some of the answers before the protagonists do, which makes it difficult to wait patiently while they engage in lengthy debates about the viability of one theory or another. Fortunately, there are a few surprises left for the very end.
A lively twist on the historical fiction genre by a promising author.Pub Date: April 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1937484309
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Amika Press
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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