Begiebing’s narrative tends to get bogged down in historical detail, but it’s arresting enough to carry you through to the...
In this latest American Gothic from Begiebing (The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton, 1999, etc.), a mysterious girl runs afoul of her relatives and becomes the obsession of a young artist in 18th-century New England.
For all of his refined artistic sensibilities, Daniel Sanborn is a man who knows how to get ahead. Trained as a painter in London, he realizes that England in the 1740s is a buyer’s market for portraiture, so he strikes out for the American colonies, just then full of rising merchants beginning to fancy themselves patrons of the arts. Not long after his arrival in Boston, Daniel wins his first commission, to paint a portrait of 12-year-old Rebecca Wentworth in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The orphaned Rebecca was adopted by Squire Browne, her father’s cousin, who lost two sons of his own to the same plague that carried off her parents. Beautiful and phenomenally intelligent, Rebecca is an artist herself: untutored, but skilled enough to make Daniel envious of her talents. Her wild, brooding canvases, far beyond the mainstream of colonial taste, are taken as signs of madness, and Rebecca’s guardian tries to cure her of such fantasies. The squire first sends her to work on a remote farm where she will have no time to paint, and later attempts to marry her off. Thwarted in both plans, he decides to commit her to a lunatic asylum. Daniel learns of Squire Browne’s plans from the girl’s former governess, who wants to help her but is powerless to intervene. Awed by Rebecca’s talent, and horrified by her guardian’s insensitivity, Daniel tries to save her. But there are a number of obstacles in the way, not the least of them the American Revolution, which is just getting underway. And Daniel soon has to confront the painful realization that his feelings for Rebecca are not wholly disinterested.
Begiebing’s narrative tends to get bogged down in historical detail, but it’s arresting enough to carry you through to the end. A truly creepy tale.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2003
ISBN: 1-58465-284-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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