A brutal, off-putting story of generational violence.
Jackson’s debut novella tells the story of a family’s horrifying secret.
The Jacobs’ curse began with Lidia, an Arkansas farm girl who was raped by her cousin Frank when she was 12 years old. Frank, himself a product of incestuous rape, was beaten nearly to death by Lidia’s father. After his recovery, however, Lidia’s parents eventually grant his request to marry Lidia, who, fearing that no other man will ever want her, has since given birth to Frank’s son. Frank moves Lidia and the baby into the cold wilderness of Wisconsin, where he opens a furniture store and continues to rape his young wife. Lidia gives Frank two more children and comes to terms with her lot via newfound religiosity. She even finds a shred of romance with Michael, one of Frank’s employees. Things continue on until one night, while Lidia and Frank are at a Christmas party, when their oldest son, James, rapes and murders their youngest daughter, Lia, and frames the crime on their middle child, sickly Edgar. Lidia falls apart, Edgar is imprisoned, and James continues to walk freely; as further crimes are committed by her descendants, Lidia “could plainly see a curse traveling through the generations.” The novella is extremely graphic, both in terms of the brutal, recurring depictions of rape and the surrounding violence. Readers may wonder why, especially when it becomes apparent that there will be no real emotional or artistic payoff. While Lidia is a sympathetic character (if only for the horrors that define her life), her simplistic rationale for the happenings around her (curses, demons, inherited sin) offer no closure for the reader. What’s more, her worldview seems to be enforced by the author, who dresses the novella in supernatural trappings: the frame narrative involves a medium who communes with the dead, and Frank narrates several portions of the story from hell.
A brutal, off-putting story of generational violence.Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5119-9453-8
Page Count: 82
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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