Despite a few rookie missteps, the novel's originality makes it worth reading.
Four gifted women of color inhabit a multigenerational saga of slavery, rebellion, and magic.
The novel begins in present-day Cleveland, as nursing home worker Gaelle is tending to a mysterious resident, known to staff only as Jane Doe, who has an uncanny ability to generate heat—an ability that Gaelle shares. The mute, ancient woman seems to understand Gaelle’s Creole. Gaelle’s story will recur, but the past predominates here. In 1791, Haiti’s slave rebellion is beginning, as escaped slaves known as maroons are mustering forces. Abigail, whose husband, a rebel, is executed by the whites, is taken by her mistress, Ninette, to New Orleans. Soon after arriving, though, Abigail is rescued from slavery by an ancient crone and a seemingly ageless man named Josiah, who educate her in the dark arts. As yellow fever grips 1850s New Orleans, the Hannigan family repairs to their summer residence, Far Water, with enslaved sisters Veronique and Margot in tow. However, the Hannigan fortunes fail thanks to the feckless husband of Catherine, Ninette’s granddaughter, and Veronique and Margot are sold. They embark on the Underground Railroad but only Margot survives the trek to Ohio. There, Margot is ushered into a magical, Shangri-La–like realm called Remembrance, which was founded by Abigail, now a fearsome priestess. She has erected the Edge, an invisible force field around the black community of Remembrance, barring any whites from entry. Josiah is now her chief henchman. However, white bounty hunters are near, and the Edge, due to Abigail’s increasing dementia, is fraying. Abigail strives to pass the torch to her adopted daughter, 18-year-old Winter, who exhibits powers of psychokinesis. (Margot too has a gift, for visceral empathy.) But before Winter is ready, disaster looms. Scenes drag on as characters ruminate over various courses of action. Plans are too often interrupted by happenstance, which, though realistic, is not all that interesting. And the novel subverts its own suspense by revealing crucial facts way too early.
Despite a few rookie missteps, the novel's originality makes it worth reading.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-29845-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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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