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
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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