A remarkable marriage of historical scholarship and creative fiction captured in stirring prose.
A debut historical novel imagines the fate of a little-known, 17th-century English settlement in the New World.
In this tale, Chief Justice Sir John Popham, a powerful adviser to King James, organizes an expedition to the New World for the sake of establishing two settlements: one named Fort St. George, a project of the Northern Virginia Company, and the other Jamestown. He recruits Richard Seymour, a student of Francis Bacon and a Montaigne enthusiast, to accompany the Fort St. George group as chaplain. Richard takes with him Skidwarres, a Native American from the Mawooshen tribe from the same area to be colonized: a land that is now Maine. Skidwarres was kidnapped and taken back to England and spent the last two years being tutored in English by Richard; now he’ll be a valuable translator and diplomat. Popham chooses that particular place to settle because of its geographical advantages—drinkable water and a river that provides convenient access into the interior—but Skidwarres cautions him that the region is populated by multiple tribes with a history of intramural war and that the expedition members might not be received hospitably. When they finally arrive, they try to forge a peaceable relationship with Nahanada, the Mawooshen leader, but it’s always a strained détente, especially after some of his braves murder five of Popham’s sailors and then a band of English soldiers rapes and murders a native girl. Richard does his best to advocate for diplomatic solutions, but Adm. Raleigh Gilbert prefers shows of force to achieve his ends. Author Seymour—a distant relation to Richard Seymour—does a masterful job of filling in the historical blanks with dramatic invention. Almost nothing is known about the disappearance of Fort St. George—records only exist for the first two months of its 14-month existence—an opportunity for blending fact and fiction the author artfully takes advantage of in his rousing narrative. He details the building of the fort, which many of the men, settling this “raw land,” see “as a sign of long overdue prosperity, or at least potentially so.” Seymour supplies plenty of intriguing personal drama as well: Richard is engaged to Margaret Throckmorton back home, but he begins a torrid sexual relationship abroad with young Lilly, who made the trip disguised as a boy.
A remarkable marriage of historical scholarship and creative fiction captured in stirring prose.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-938883-51-4
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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