An engaging novel, which successfully merges a drama and a thriller into a period piece.
A young boy’s discovery of bones on his family’s Oklahoma farm throws his life into a tailspin in Fuller’s (Decency, 2012) post–World War II novel.
In 1946, 7-year-old Joe works hard on a farm with no electricity. Power companies are looking for land, and Joe’s grandfather hears that organized crime is trying to muscle its way into the electricity business. After Joe discovers what appear to be human remains, James, a man helping at the farm, is arrested for murder. Billy Joe Parmalee, a young attorney, asks Joe if he will help him prove that James is innocent. As the story progresses, the child learns that not everyone is trustworthy. Fuller delivers a novel that’s fully engaged with its time period: Joe is in awe over such things as cameras and telephones and is impressed by a house that has not one, but two toilets conveniently located inside. The author provides the boy with a rich history—his father died during the war, and his mother, during the course of the narrative, moves to Kansas City to make a better life for herself and her son. Joe’s interactions with his family, particularly his grandpa, make for sweet moments, but the standout scenes are those with Joe and the lawyer, as the two work on James’ case. Fuller appropriately and endearingly highlights the farm’s chores; milking the cows is done so often that people use them to measure the time of day, and laundry is an all-day event. Joe comes across as a naïve, believable 7-year-old, but he also displays shrewdness and levelheadedness. He has cravings for cream sodas but also describes his anger as “sour acid rivers” that have “raged in [his] veins.” The story is written in Joe’s dialect—the phrase “might could” appears often. But the author’s stylistic bravura really drives the novel home, as he effectively uses fragmented sentences in the more intense scenes, such as Joe’s nightmare that opens the story.
An engaging novel, which successfully merges a drama and a thriller into a period piece.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478383499
Page Count: 226
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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