A subtle novel that’s a glowing testament to the enduring power of ideas.
Debut author Post crafts a whimsical tale about an academic’s unexpected walk upon a road less traveled.
Kate Brown, a literature professor who’s an expert on the author Herman Melville, is on the path to academic glory. Harvard University plucked the young Midwesterner from Northwestern to give her a tenure-track position. Then her college’s dean peremptorily informs her that she’ll be filling in for a professor on sabbatical, teaching the freshman seminar on Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Kate is taken aback by this development, thinking it’s daunting “for someone who hasn’t experienced the outdoors, except through the windows of a library these past four years, to teach a book about the joys of living in the midst of nature.” However, Kate immerses herself in the topic and is soon aided by one of her students, Heather Channing, who comes from a region called Walden North in rural Vermont. When Kate visits there, Thoreau’s message resonates with her: “Everything is interconnected here. She took a long, slow deep breath to inhale this new insight—a tranquil wholeness.” She soon finds herself torn between two men (and two lifestyles): roguish fellow professor Charles Blake Winthrop Prentiss, the epitome of Harvard snobbishness; and Heather’s father, William, a stoic educator who walked away from Harvard to become the seeming mirror image of Thoreau himself. The novel believably recounts Kate’s transformation from a scholar wed to the theoretical to a person craving all the real-life experiences that a simpler existence has to offer. Post’s characters are well-drawn, although it quickly becomes obvious where her own allegiances lie; after all, she’s a former teacher who lives in a New England setting not unlike Walden North. Her use of italicized passages from Walden in the text seems a little twee and heavy-handed, but it doesn’t greatly diminish the enjoyment of her tale. Overall, her message, emblazoned in Kate’s philosophical journey, will make readers stop and reflect.
A subtle novel that’s a glowing testament to the enduring power of ideas.Pub Date: June 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9961357-6-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Wingate sheds light on a shameful true story of child exploitation but is less successful in engaging readers in her...
Avery Stafford, a lawyer, descendant of two prominent Southern families and daughter of a distinguished senator, discovers a family secret that alters her perspective on heritage.
Wingate (Sisters, 2016, etc.) shifts the story in her latest novel between present and past as Avery uncovers evidence that her Grandma Judy was a victim of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and is related to a woman Avery and her father meet when he visits a nursing home. Although Avery is living at home to help her parents through her father’s cancer treatment, she is also being groomed for her own political career. Readers learn that investigating her family’s past is not part of Avery's scripted existence, but Wingate's attempts to make her seem torn about this are never fully developed, and descriptions of her chemistry with a man she meets as she's searching are also unconvincing. Sections describing the real-life orphanage director Georgia Tann, who stole poor children, mistreated them, and placed them for adoption with wealthy clients—including Joan Crawford and June Allyson—are more vivid, as are passages about Grandma Judy and her siblings. Wingate’s fans and readers who enjoy family dramas will find enough to entertain them, and book clubs may enjoy dissecting the relationship and historical issues in the book.
Wingate sheds light on a shameful true story of child exploitation but is less successful in engaging readers in her fictional characters' lives.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-425-28468-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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