As always from Desai: an intelligent and freshly tooled retelling of an old story.
True love contends with treachery in high places in this last of a trilogy (Isolde, 2002, etc.) about the fraught lives of Tristan, noble knight, and Isolde, Queen of Ireland.
Miles, who gives old legends a feminist spin, now makes Isolde a champion of female freedom and leadership: a champion who must not only defeat an invasion by painted men, the notorious Picts, but also by malignant Christian priests who want to destroy the religion of the mother goddess, who preaches kindness, love and the right of women to choose their men. Married to King Mark of Cornwall, a vassal of the great Queen Igraine, Isolde now wants to end the marriage and marry Tristan. But Tristan has sworn allegiance as Mark’s knight, and feels obliged to return to the Cornish court. Hearing rumors of a possible Pict invasion, Isolde hurries home to Dublin, only to learn that the Picts have landed and are marching on her capital. While she contends with the Picts and an unsettling attraction to their leader, the handsome Darath, who wants her as his queen, Tristan also has battles to fight. He defeats a deranged knight in the woods, escapes the demands of a sinister lady, and then decides it’s better to be with Isolde, who loves him, than serving unappreciative Mark. But the two lovers face more misunderstanding, dangers, and betrayals as ambitious knights scheme for Mark’s throne. Priests not only want Mark to renounce Isolde but limit her power, and a jealous Mark turns against Tristan. Back in Cornwall to look for the missing Tristan, Isolde collapses when Mark first shows her what she assumes is Tristan’s body, then imprisons her with a group of lepers. But the two lovers aren’t alone, as Merlin and the powerful Lady of the Sea make sure that these followers of the old ways escape destruction.
As always from Desai: an intelligent and freshly tooled retelling of an old story.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-60962-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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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