The acclaimed Danish author's first novelwhich follows into English translation his third, Smilla's Sense of Snow (1993), and second, Borderliners (1994)ingeniously reinvents the traditional family chronicle. Hoeg's ambitious narrative spans three and a half centuries, beginning with the tale of a megalomaniac nobleman (the Count) whose ``dream'' is to halt the passage of time and create a stasis in which his own preeminence remains forever unchallengedand, not incidentally, of scientifically demonstrating that the center of the Earth is located on his property. The Count's folly initiates a train of schemes and envisionings involving the son of his steward, the steward's wife, the unconventional family into which their son later marries, and their succeeding generations, all of which are characterized by a struggle between two conflicting impulses: the lust to acquire wealth and power and a selfless (literally, socialist) solidarity with the underprivileged. Hoeg fills the novel with colorful and vivid detail, expertly dramatizing a broad range of occupations and activities. His quirkily memorable characters include a charming young actor who fails to meet the standards of the lawless family (``Adonis brought his father and mother much sorrow, through his compassion for mankind''), and a spoiled beauty whose increasing alienation from her businesslike husband brings her into troublesome intimacy with their handsome young son. The dreamy distancing from reality that they all experience is powerfully underlined by magical-realist metaphors: An overcrowded tenement building sinks into the earth; fathers, surrendering authority to their sons, lose physical definition, blur before others' eyes, and eventually disappear. A fascinating further dimension is added by Hoeg's narrator, who addresses both readers and the novel's characters, lamenting his lack of full omniscience, laboring to puzzle out the meaning of the story of whichhe finally informs ushe is a central part. A brilliant and appealing workone that will make readers of Hoeg's varied and inventive novels impatient for his next.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-17138-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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