A well-researched historical epic, but its enthusiasm for trivial details impedes the natural flow of the story.
This whirlwind novel of the Irish-American experience traces one couple’s journey from an impoverished Irish community to a triumphant life in America.
In 1848, 16-year-old Brian O’Rourke is a poor violinist who plays songs to comfort his starving countrymen. Elizabeth Reilly is a teenage pianist from a well-to-do family who’s skeptical of bourgeois marriage. Gradually, the two become star-crossed lovers and separately leave Ireland to pursue their dreams. Elizabeth arrives in Paris and studies with Frédéric Chopin, who abruptly dies of tuberculosis, and then moves to Virginia. Brian lands in New York and becomes involved in the Underground Railroad and then the Civil War. The book’s most interesting thread is Brian’s aptitude for cryptography and telegraphy, which makes him a unique asset to the North. Brian eventually meets President Abraham Lincoln and becomes an intelligence officer. The narrator changes with every chapter, from Brian and Elizabeth to lesser characters like Elizabeth’s Aunt Bess and Solicitor Charles Reilly. Rooney (The Acheron Deception, 2014) writes in the first-person present tense, which lends urgency to the narrative. Whether he’s describing a Utah sunset or a grisly amputation, the prose is rich in detail. Unfortunately, the book is mired in exposition, and the dialogue can sometimes be encyclopedic in tone. Toward the end, for example, Brian asks his nephew David about his new car, to which he replies: “It’s from the Winton Motor Carriage Company in Cleveland, Ohio. It was a thousand dollars. It has an odorless hydrocarbon engine that can reach twenty miles an hour, and suspension wire wheels that minimize passenger jostling on a bumpy road.” Other characters relate facts, such as a definition of “Black Irish,” for no apparent reason save to educate readers. The book also sometimes rushes through its more tender moments; only minutes after Elizabeth delivers a child, for example, the new parents have a casual discussion about the nature of God.
A well-researched historical epic, but its enthusiasm for trivial details impedes the natural flow of the story.Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9907436-2-0
Page Count: 364
Publisher: SAVOIR Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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