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THE ANCHOR HOUSE

Name: THE ANCHOR HOUSE
Author: Spencer Margaret
ISBN: 978-1-68830-950-0

by Spencer Margaret ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2019

An engaging tale about self-love that provides readers with a reprieve from life’s problems.

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A wayward young woman ends up in a hidden island sanctuary in this debut philosophical novel.

When Winnie Spade realizes she feels nothing for the man she has agreed to marry—he’s been seeing another woman, after all—she decides to disappear. She packs a bag in the early hours of the morning and begins a journey west across America with no specific destination. She soon finds herself in the town of Manitou Lake, Minnesota, where she meets an unconventional woman named Eleanor Reader. Eleanor runs a nondenominational church out of her house on a small island in the lake. It’s called the Anchor House. On Winnie’s first visit, Eleanor already begins offering odd advice for a pastor: “You should be careful about loving anybody more than yourself. You can get close, but in the moment where your love for them is about to spill over from your own, you should ask yourself if you’re willing to make each choice of your life for them, not yourself.” Anchor House becomes an unexpected haven where Winnie can challenge herself and grow. But when Eleanor is in danger of losing the island, Winnie will have to use what she’s learned to try to save it. Margaret’s prose is warm while maintaining an air of mystery, as in this passage from Winnie’s perspective: “ ‘I’ve tried to make it a happy place, like something you’d dream about,’ Eleanor said, walking ahead of me onto the lawn…Elegant and ornately colored birds strutted near the beach, their red-and-gold feathers shining ablaze in the sunlight.” The book is a feel-good read, pure and simple. The truths the tale contains are hardly groundbreaking, and the plot is slight and fairly contrived. Even so, the author manages to make readers feel as though they, too, are taking a recuperative sojourn at Anchor House, where the details of their trials are immaterial and everyone is happy to welcome them. There are, almost inevitably, moments when things get a bit sappy or silly, but for those seeking cathartic, uncomplicated escapism in fictional form, this story of Winnie and Eleanor goes down very smooth.

An engaging tale about self-love that provides readers with a reprieve from life’s problems.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-68830-950-0

Page Count: 267

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: July 17, 2020

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN

by Jacqueline Harpman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1997

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I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').

Pub Date: May 1, 1997

ISBN: 1-888363-43-6

Page Count: 224

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ORLANDA
by Jacqueline Harpman & translated by Ros Schwartz

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.