Forbath (The Last Hero, 1988, etc.), who died earlier this year, leaves a powerful valedictory based on the real and tragic events precipitated by Portugal's first lodgment in West Africa. In 1482, a caravel dispatched by the Portuguese king to find a sea route to the Indies makes a brief landfall near a mighty river called Zaire by the natives. Leaving the captain's page, 15- year-old Gil Eanes (who's been represented as a royal), to pay the crown's respects to the local chief, the ship sails away, never to return. A talented linguist, Gil impresses the chief and his younger son Mbemba; owing to the enmity of the tribe's juju man, however, he's exiled from the upcountry court to an offshore island well away from established trade routes. Ten years on, the lonely castaway finally flags down another Portuguese vessel. Gil (now with a son by Mbemba's younger sister) gets word of the arrival to Mbemba, who soon after seizes the throne. Eager to learn the art of writing and other of civilization's blessings for his people, the ambitious young prince embraces Catholicism and becomes a vassal of the Portuguese. A decade later, the Portuguese, anxious to settle their new province of Brazil, start casting about for slaves and settle on Mbemba's people, and the Portuguese monarch sends five well-stocked cargo craft to the Kongo (latter-day Zaire). While sanctimonious priests speak of saving souls and building cities on a hill, hard-eyed, well-armed Portuguese soldiers are scouting for bondsmen. Factions long mistrustful of Mbemba rise in rebellion; Gil dies; his son is enslaved; and the Portuguese seize control of the country. Mbemba's penance for the sin of vaulting ambition is to live on as slavers ravage his country and its people. A true adventure brought vividly to live amid the violent social, cultural, and religious conflicts that marked the Dark Continent's first contacts with Europe.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-80951-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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