Jewish fugitive from the Gangs of New Orleans fights the War between the States.
Elias Abrams, the illegitimate son of wealthy sugar planter I.J. Lieber, whom he meets exactly once—or maybe, fatefully, twice—is a denizen of the mean streets of New Orleans. He and his mother eke out a living growing and selling vegetables. In and out of orphanages after his mother dies of yellow fever, Abrams becomes the henchman of Silas Wolfe, the leader of one of the city’s fiercest gangs, the Cypress Stump Boys. Now Abrams, a Confederate soldier, slogs through mostly losing battles with his unlikely comrade-in arms, Mark-Twain–waggish classics professor Carlson. When his company commander asks Abrams to correspond with a respectable young lady of his faith whose rabbi has urged her to write to a soldier, Carlson offers editing help to his semi-literate friend. Soon a rose/talc-scented reply arrives from Nora Bloom, and Abrams is enchanted. But his dark past intrudes. Two thugs, Cobb and Petitgout, test his poker prowess, and Abrams fears they are agents of Wolfe, now his enemy. Challenging the duo, he nearly kills them. He and Carlson join a cavalry expedition to Arkansas, where Abrams is wounded in a skirmish with Union horsemen. Delirious, he reveals to Carlson that he and Wolfe might have murdered Lieber. Sent back to New Orleans to recuperate, he meets Nora. Despite the social gulf between them, she is intrigued. But Abrams can’t resist trying to settle his old score with Wolfe, who threatens reprisals against Nora if Abrams doesn’t dispatch Petitgout. Sexual encounters and carnage are described in lurid detail, and, throughout, the language is as lush and sometimes as tepid and leaden as a humid bayou day. The illusion that Abrams labors under for half the novel is revealed in a final cruel twist, but since Abrams never transcends his hardscrabble persona, readers won’t sympathize.
Elias Abrams remains a cipher, easily upstaged by the real star here: New Orleans in all its fetid, polyglot glory.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-58243-367-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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A love letter to the power of books and friendship.
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Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.
Alice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library—an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes (Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-56248-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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