This time out, Captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin limp home from America for a brief rest before sailing to the Baltic to subvert the occupying Catalan troops—and then to the Bay of Biscay to run aground. The dashing Aubrey/Maturin naval tales (among others, The Ionian Mission—see above) continue to come out in intervals from England, where they are hugely and deservedly popular. Published some years ago in the UK, they've been arriving out of order, so readers find themselves sorting out prequels from sequels. But shipping arrangements do no damage to these polished, historically accurate, and intensely pleasurable tales of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era. Anglo-Iberian physician and spy Stephen Maturin is again the linchpin, providing the excuse for his dashing friend Aubrey to flee the mess he has made of his British investments. Aboard H.M.S Ariel, Aubrey transports Maturin to the Baltic, where the doctor will use his linguistic skills and impeccable Catalan separatist credentials to convince Spanish troops holding Baltic islands for Napoleon that they should desert the Corsican monster and throw their lot in with England. The Baltic mission is successful, but the subsequent flight from Scandinavia runs into the rocks off the French coast. The officers are taken prisoner and transported to Paris, where they dine handsomely on meals cooked by a pretty widow as they await execution. Splendid escape. Literate and amusing.
Pub Date: Jan. 27, 1992
ISBN: 0-393-30820-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
An underdeveloped fictional landscape.
Harrison’s debut explores class privilege and true love in 1938 Montauk.
When financier Carl Fisher, who made and lost a fortune developing Miami Beach, took an ill-advised gamble on the rockbound sand spits of Montauk, Long Island, he paved the way for future development—and this novel. Harrison’s protagonist, Beatrice, and her banker husband, Harry, check into Montauk Manor—the luxury resort built by Fisher, which still stands today—with plans that she will summer there while he works in the city. Locals from Montauk’s seaside fishing village comprise the servant underclass at the manor, among them Elizabeth, who collects the guests’ laundry to wash in her humble cottage. Bored with the manor’s indolent coterie of wealthy wives, Beatrice, whose own background is middle-class, befriends Elizabeth. Although ostensibly sharing Beatrice’s longing for a child, Harry has been neglecting his husbandly duties, because, as Beatrice learns, his business in the city is monkey business. But Harry’s protracted absences permit Beatrice to pursue an affair with her true soul mate, lighthouse keeper Thomas. The dialogue is exposition-heavy, and the characterizations seem rote, as does the plot. For example, Beatrice’s only ally at the manor, Dolly, seems drawn from the Rosalind Russell character in the movie The Women, complete with flamboyant hats. Dutiful but brief attention is paid to American isolationism and FDR’s reluctance, then, to engage Hitler. The destabilizing force of gentrification is decried at times, but through Beatrice, Harrison concedes that “Fisher had developed Montauk without ruining its beauty.” Beatrice, writing anonymously for a Manhattan paper, exposes the foibles of the moneyed but mindless summer people, including their habit of sending soiled diapers home through the mail, overburdening the local post office. Harrison fails to mine the rich vein of conflict that a mole in the manor’s midst might have generated. The novel’s central question is typical of movies of that era: Is it better to have true love but no money? Or loveless riches? It is a controversy (among many others) that this book handily dodges.
An underdeveloped fictional landscape.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20011-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
While no masterpiece, this work nevertheless contributes in good measure to the current and very welcome revitalization of...
The NBA-winning Australian-born, now New England author (People of the Book, 2008, etc.) moves ever deeper into the American past.
Her fourth novel’s announced subject is the eponymous Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a member of the Wampanoag Indian tribe that inhabits Massachusetts’s Great Harbor (a part of Martha’s Vineyard), and the first Native American who will graduate from Harvard College (in 1665). Even as a boy, Caleb is a paragon of sharp intelligence, proud bearing and manly charm, as we learn from the somewhat breathless testimony of Bethia Mayfield, who grows up in Great Harbor where her father, a compassionate and unprejudiced preacher, oversees friendly relations between white settlers and the placid Wampanoag. The story Bethia unfolds is a compelling one, focused primarily on her own experiences as an indentured servant to a schoolmaster who prepares promising students for Harvard; a tense relationship with her priggish, inflexible elder brother Makepeace; and her emotional bond of friendship with the occasionally distant and suspicious Caleb, who, in this novel’s most serious misstep, isn’t really the subject of his own story. Fascinating period details and a steadily expanding plot, which eventually encompasses King Philip’s War, inevitable tensions between Puritan whites and upwardly mobile “salvages,” as well as the compromises unavoidably ahead for Bethia, help to modulate a narrative voice that sometimes teeters too uncomfortably close to romantic cliché. Both Bethia, whose womanhood precludes her right to seek formal education, and the stoical Caleb are very nearly too good to be true. However, Brooks’ knowledgeable command of the energies and conflicts of the period, and particularly her descriptions of the reverence for learning that animates the little world of Harvard and attracts her characters’ keenest longings, carries a persuasive and quite moving emotional charge.
While no masterpiece, this work nevertheless contributes in good measure to the current and very welcome revitalization of the historical novel.Pub Date: May 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02104-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
