by Rachel Urquhart ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2014
An impressive debut.
A historical novel set in 1840s Massachusetts intertwines the stories of a Shaker community, a world-weary fire inspector and a beleaguered farm family.
Silas, a depraved drunken wastrel, has ruined the prosperous family farm once owned by his late father-in-law, who died suddenly and mysteriously. He wants to sell the land but must first get wife May out of the way. He makes the mistake of revealing his intent to teenage daughter Polly, whom he has been sexually abusing. Fearing for their lives, May, Polly and younger brother Ben (whom Silas had tried to drown in infancy) escape by night but not before Polly drops a lamp on the floor near the bed where her father lies in a stupor. Flames consume the farmhouse, but Polly thinks she sees Silas running into the yard as they flee. Miles away, May indentures her children to be raised by the Shakers, a celibate Christian community, and disappears. Simon, a private detective in the employ of (and, due to a tragic childhood incident, lifelong thrall to) Hurlbut, a wealthy bully, is sent to sift through the ashes. Suspecting foul play after he finds Silas’ body some distance from the charred ruins, Simon reports the conflagration as accidental because a lengthy inquest would thwart Hurlbut’s speedy acquisition of the property. Racked with guilt over her role in the fire, and cut off from Ben by the Shakers’ strict segregation of the sexes, Polly finds comfort in the Shakers’ carefully ordered, self-sustaining way of life and a form of kinship with her roommate, Sister Charity. When Polly, in a trance, summons imaginary angel companions, the community reveres her as a mystic or “Visionist.” As Urquhart explores the various enslavements that bind all of the characters, Simon’s investigation becomes a high-stakes race against time. The plot is burdened by too many narrators and too much Shaker minutia. Nevertheless, Urquhart’s fine craftsmanship covers a multitude of sins.
An impressive debut.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-471-11333-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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