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
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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