The book could serve as a costumer’s reference for period fashion, but Ellen is simply too perfect to be the believable...
Rags-to-riches saga of a fashionable London couturière, from Tasmania resident Graeme-Evans (The Uncrowned Queen, 2006, etc.).
In 1843, cast adrift by widowhood, Constance Gowan, with daughter Ellen, 13, in tow, turns to the family that had disowned her after her elopement with Edwin, a penniless scholar. Her sister Daisy, unhappily married to cruel Sir Isidore, a prominent and much older barrister, welcomes Constance and Ellen to Isidore’s mansion, Shene House. For a while, existence at Shene is almost pleasant—Ellen and her older cousin Oriana are like sisters, and Ellen enjoys having new gowns made for her by Madame de Valentin, an exiled French aristocrat turned dressmaker to the gentry. At a ball, the girls meet Connor, and Ellen is smitten but disappointed when Connor courts Oreana. After Isidore strikes Constance (he’s been abusing Daisy for years), the Gowans flee to Angelique’s atelier. Constance, a gifted seamstress and Ellen, talented at drawing and design, are earning their keep, but Constance, disturbed by the mutual attraction growing between Angelique’s rakish son Raoul and Ellen, insists that they move to London to open a dress shop. After only a day in London, Constance, ailing from consumption, dies. Raoul inveigles Ellen, now 15, into marrying him, but deserts her when she becomes pregnant. She winds up at a clothing factory, but her skill quickly nets her a promotion. When daughter Connie is born (and, after foiling Raoul’s scheme to sell the baby!), Ellen takes refuge at Clairmallon, the great house Oriana shares with her now husband Connor. Still intent on founding her own London fashion emporium, Ellen, staked by Connor, opens Chez Miss Constance. The enterprise struggles until Lady Hawksmoor is seen at a royal reception wearing one of Ellen’s creations. Immediately a bevy of socialites is beating down her door. Raoul, whose gigolo appeal is waning, again sees potential profit in his marriage.
The book could serve as a costumer’s reference for period fashion, but Ellen is simply too perfect to be the believable protagonist of an up-from-adversity story.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9442-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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