An inordinately ambitious portrayal of the life and mission of abolitionist John Brown, from the veteran novelist whose previous fictional forays into American history include The New World (1978) and The Relation of My Imprisonment (not reviewed). Banks's story takes the form of a series of lengthy letters written, 40 years after Brown's execution, by his surviving son Owen in response to the request of a professor (himself a descendant of William Lloyd Garrison) who is planning a biography of the antislavery martyr. Owen's elaborate tale, frequently interrupted by digressive analyses of his own conflicted feelings about his family's enlistment in their father's cause, traces a pattern of family losses and business failings that seemed only to heighten ``the Old Man's'' fervent belief that he had been chosen by God to lead the slaves to freedom. As we observe the increasingly wrathful actions of Brown, his sons, and his followers, Banks patiently reveals and explores the motivations that will lead to their involvement with the Underground Railroad, the bloody slaughter (by Brown's self-proclaimed ``Army of the North'') of ``pro-slave settlers'' in Kansas, and finally the fateful attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. In many ways, this is very impressive fiction—obviously a painstakingly researched one, with a genuine understanding of both the particulars and the attitudes of its period. The slowly building indirect characterization of ``Father Abraham, making his terrible, final sacrifice to his God'' has some power. But Owen's redundant agonies of conscience (especially regarding his sexual naivetÇ) grow tiresome, and the novel is enormously overlong (e.g., Banks gives us the full nine-page text of a sermon Brown preaches, comparing himself to Job). Cloudsplitter will undoubtedly be much admired. But it penetrates less convincingly into the enigma of John Brown than did a novel half its length, Leonard Ehrlich's God's Angry Man, published 60 years ago. Once again, sadly, Banks's reach has exceeded his grasp. ($125,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-016860-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
IN THE NEWS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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