Mining the same material that he used for his first sea-tale (The Golden Ocean, 1956), O'Brian returned three years later to Commodore Anson's 1740 globe-circling voyage in The Unknown Shore, originally published in Britain in 1959. The book follows the adventures of another pair of friends, clearly the models for the Aubrey/Maturin 17volume series that was to begin, in 1970, with Master and Commander. In this precursor, midshipman Jack Byron and his lifelong friend, Tobias Barrow, join the Wager, a converted Indiaman merchant vessel, the fourth and least of Commodore Anson's squadron whose mission is to cross the Atlantic, sail down the coast of Brazil, round the Horn, and harass the Spanish treasure ships along the coast of Chile—this at a time when the Spanish had the Pacific practically to themselves. Jack is large, hearty, and physical—very much what Jack Aubrey might have been like in his youth. Toby, who ships as surgeon's mate, comes out of London's slums—a foundling who'd been apprenticed by a physician who, on a bet, said he believed anyone could be taught if caught early enough and kept at it long enough. Now, Toby, a true innocent, is overeducated and undersocialized, an enormously engaging Stephen Maturin-to-be; he's fluent in Latin and Greek, and natural science is his passion, but naval priorities, alas, remain a mystery to him. Wager, meanwhile, is manned by the dregs of Anson's squadron and captained by an inexperienced and brutal officer. Barely making it around Cape Horn, the ship is wrecked on an inhospitable coast, where the crew's natural proclivities lead to mutiny, desertion, drunkenness, and murder. Making their painful way north to the Chilean seaport of Valparaiso, only 5 of the original 220 will get back to civilization. O'Brian, with obvious affection for his characters and their time, hits his storytelling stride here. Nobody does the 18th-century British Navy any better.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03859-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It”...
Queen of the summer novel—how could she not be, with all her stories set on an island—Hilderbrand delivers a beguiling ninth (The Castaways, 2009, etc.), featuring romance and mystery on isolated Tuckernuck Island.
The Tate family has had a house on Tuckernuck (just off the coast of swanky Nantucket) for generations. It has been empty for years, but now Birdie wants to spend a quiet mother-daughter week there with Chess before Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan. Then the unthinkable happens—perfect Chess (beautiful, rich, well-bred food editor of Glamorous Home) dumps the equally perfect Michael. She quits her job, leaves her New York apartment for Birdie’s home in New Canaan, and all without explanation. Then the unraveling continues: Michael dies in a rock-climbing accident, leaving Chess not quite a widow, but devastated, guilty, unreachable in the shell of herself. Birdie invites her younger daughter Tate (a pretty, naïve computer genius) and her own bohemian sister India, whose husband, world-renowned sculptor Bill Bishop, killed himself years ago, to Tuckernuck for the month of July, in the hopes that the three of them can break through to Chess. Hunky Barrett Lee is their caretaker, coming from Nantucket twice a day to bring groceries and take away laundry (idyllic Tuckernuck is remote—no phone, no hot water, no ferry) as he’s also inspiring renewed lust in Tate, who has had a crush on him since she was a kid. The author jumps between the four women—Tate and her blossoming relationship with Barrett, India and her relationship with Lula Simpson, a painter at the Academy where India is a curator, Birdie, who is surprised by the recent kindnesses of ex-husband Grant, and finally Chess, who in her journal is uncoiling the sordid, sad circumstances of her break with normal life and Michael’s death.
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It” beach book of the summer.Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-04387-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
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