There’s not much meat in this carefully garnished offering.
Brewer’s second novel (after The Poet of Tolstoy Park, 2005) is a problematic coming-of-age story.
The setting is the same: Fairhope, Ala., on Mobile Bay. It’s November 1941, and our narrator, 16-year-old Rove McNee, is growing apart from his father, Captain Dominus McNee, a schoonerman who does commercial runs in the Delta. Everything was fine when the Captain taught Rove sailing and woodworking, but lately the old salt has turned into a mean drunk who patronizes brothels. Rove dreads his returns to their bayfront home, where he lives with his mother, Lillian, kid brother Julian and Granny Wooten, who is dying. Rove’s outsize love for his grandmother blends with his love of books, which she inspired. The novel is festooned with references to Emerson, Thoreau, Yeats, et al., but their presence deprives the characters of oxygen. The other important adult is Josef Unruh, a German neighbor, who generously gave Rove his damaged sloop and helped him repair it. But how seriously can you take someone who speaks comic-book English (“Vat is ze value of . . . zees and zat”)? The plot pivots on the Captain’s behavior at Granny Wooten’s wake. Believing, ludicrously, that Josef is a spy, and suspecting, less ludicrously, that Josef has eyes for his wife, he shoots at the German and then slashes him before being jailed, briefly. Bail? Criminal charges? Not in this jurisdiction. His father’s rampage is the last straw for Rove, who holes up on his sloop. We learn a lot about the boat and Rove’s fishing skills (he uses hand-cast nets), more congenial territory for Brewer, evidently, than the angst-ridden McNee household. He touches lightly on Rove’s emergence into manhood, as he faces down his father and exchanges demure kisses with a potential girlfriend, but then loses control of his material in a final flurry that involves a death, a vigilante ultimatum and a family scattered to the winds.
There’s not much meat in this carefully garnished offering.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-47633-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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