Subtly drawn scenes of naturalistic beauty and sudden brutality redeem Gatewood's distracting tendency to write dialogue,...
A first novel set in 1930s New Mexico finds an extraordinarily resourceful, but emotionally wounded, 18-year-old on a violent search for moral truth.
Fed-up with his drunk, dangerously abusive father, Trude Mason puts his mother on a horse, loads up a mule with provisions, saddles up his trusty mare Triften, and heads for Colorado, where he hopes to find ranch work and make a new start. Though he stares down his knife-wielding father, Trude encounters disaster in the mountains that leaves his mother dead. Later, he witnesses and fails to avenge the murder of a young black girl's child by a gloating, well-dressed Englishman. Left in the mountains for dead, Trude wanders into a nameless town whose peculiar, pathetic Cormac McCarthy–esque denizens are betting that the arrival of a railroad spur will bring them wealth and civilization. Though he finds a friend in the wistful rancher Charlie Ford, Trude sees right through the pretentiousness of most of the townsfolk, finding little to like in the drunken hedonism of a young Italian immigrant John Frank, the gloating bigotry of the Ralston brothers, and the bloviating mayor, who lectures Trude about showing respect for authority. Trude challenges that authority when he discovers that the black girl has been imprisoned unjustly and might even be executed. Trude has to take justice into his own hands, and, in this postmodern updating of the formula western, heroic action leads to nothing but loss and sorrow. Only after returning to the mountains can Trude come to terms with the grief that plagues his heart.
Subtly drawn scenes of naturalistic beauty and sudden brutality redeem Gatewood's distracting tendency to write dialogue, some trite (an aging mentor remarks, “pain ain’t nothin’ more than the memory of comfort”), without quotation marks.Pub Date: May 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-6802-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
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
A warmhearted and highly entertaining first novel in which a poor but plucky Kentucky gift with a sharp tongue, soft heart and strong spirit sets out on a cross-country trip and arrives at surprising new meanings for love, friendship, and family—as well as overcoming the big and little fears that inhibit lives. Taylor Greer has always been afraid of two things: tires, one of which she saw explode and cripple a local tobacco farmer; and pregnancy, the common, constricting fate of her own mother and, generally, of young girls in Pittman County, KY, where she has grown up. To avoid the latter, Taylor, born Marietta, sets out on a set of the former to find a new life in the West. What she doesn't count on, however, is her flighty '55 Volkswagon temporarily "giving out" in the Oklahoma flatlands or the ditching of a dumbstruck Indian baby in the car while she has it fixed. By the time Taylor's car breaks down again, and finally, in Tucson, Taylor has figured out that the baby has been badly abused, but not how to support it or herself, or how to lure the baby back into trust, growth, and speech. So—she takes a job in a dreaded tire-repair shop from which her car refuses to budge, and meets a motley collection of sanctuary workers, refugees, other ex-Kentuckians, social workers, and spinsters who, together, help her to bolster her courage and create a real family for her sweet, stunned, unbidden child. A lovely, funny, touching and humane debut, reminiscent of the work of Hilma Wolitzer and Francine Prose.
Pub Date: March 16, 1987
ISBN: 0060915544
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1987
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