A long but well written story of friendships and growth in the 20th century.
A sprawling debut novel focuses on two men and their perspective-shifting friendship.
This book opens in 1968, as Alan Young fails his United States Naval Reserve physical. But the ailment is minor and the prospect of being sent to Vietnam becomes a possibility. Alan throws himself into campaigning for Eugene McCarthy for president in the meantime and makes his way through the end of college with his friends, particularly Stefan Kopinski. When Alan is drafted after graduation, he declines his influential father’s attempts to find a safe role for him and decides to immigrate to Canada. He deals with the challenges of expatriate life, finds and loses new friends, and eventually marries Jeanne McCarran, the daughter of his Canadian mentor. After Jeanne gives birth to their daughter, Mary, Alan has a crisis of conscience and decides to return to America to stand trial for evading the draft. Jeanne follows him and makes a new life for herself in St. Louis, where the family settles after Alan is released from prison. The book’s second part follows Stefan, who heads to law school after college and gradually stops responding to Alan’s frequent letters. When Alan has a mental breakdown, Stefan reluctantly goes to see him. As he reconnects with Alan, he begins to reevaluate his life, including his relationships with his wife, ex-wife, and daughters. Ultimately, Stefan decides to leave his law firm to fight for the change he wants to see in the world.
Rennick is a thoughtful writer and makes insightful observations about men’s relationships with one another as well as exploring broader questions of commitment and obligation in employment and marriage. The tale’s omniscient narrator has a tendency to wrap the storytelling in various pronouncements (“The McCarthy campaign, weakening daily, was not so perceived by Alan, who remained optimistic and immensely dedicated”). These, along with the lengthy tangential dialogues on topics like Quebec’s independence movement, are well written, but may be too much at the periphery for readers who prefer a more concise narrative. (The book’s 546-page length is also assisted by a 20-page depiction of the dream that inspires Alan to accept his punishment for draft evasion and a detailed look at the inner life of the man who sues one of Stefan’s clients for employment discrimination.) Though some of the female characters eventually develop into well-rounded contributors to the overall plot, nearly all are introduced with an assessment of their physical attributes (“She had fine, firm hips and superbly proportioned thighs and calves”; “the shapely girl who was leading them to their seats”; “her bosom was large”; “her bulging breasts”; “unquestionably still an attractive woman, despite a rough menopause not quite played out”). For several women, their sexual availability is their defining characteristic. But the story’s principal players are for the most part thoroughly developed and exist to make substantive contributions to the plot and themes. Although the page count may deter some potential readers, the novel is on the whole an enjoyable read, and one that feels easier and much less daunting than it may seem at first glance.
A long but well written story of friendships and growth in the 20th century.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948261-20-3
Page Count: 562
Publisher: Hugo House Publishers
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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