by Stephen Finlay Archer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2016
An engrossing beginning of what promises to be an involving generational saga about Irish immigrants.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
This first book in a four-volume series highlights differences in the experiences of Irish natives fleeing their homeland in the early 20th century.
The painter Samuel Finlay, Archer’s grandfather, is one of the main characters in this debut historical novel, set during World War I. The author’s mother, Dorothy, appears as the artist’s infant daughter, Dot. Following his sweetheart Liz and hoping to forget the needless death of his younger brother Liam, Samuel migrates to Toronto and becomes an illustrator for the local newspaper. Meanwhile, Collin O’Donnell falls into a life of crime after his mother is killed and his younger sister Claire disappears. Samuel meets the thuggish Collin at the site of a warehouse fire, and sees something of Liam in him. The artist decides to make saving Collin his project. Meanwhile, Claire becomes a slave factory worker before she escapes and then trains as a nurse. She is heading to Europe aboard the Lusitania when a German torpedo sinks the cruise ship in the Irish Sea. She’s rescued by, and falls in love with, Irish revolutionary playwright Tadgh McCarthy, but she has amnesia and doesn’t remember who she is. So everyone is searching for something: Samuel for redemption, Collin for his sister, Tadgh for revenge on the Brits who killed his parents, and Claire for her past. The tale also grapples with what those quests may end up costing the four players. Archer has created colorful, sympathetic characters, all striving for better lives. He packs this dense volume with pungent details, giving the reader necessary context, and even provides eight pages of history at the volume’s end. Despite the abundance of information about the era, the narrative flows smoothly. In this first installment of the series, Archer only hints at the shared history between the O’Donnell and McCarthy clans and the relics that connect them. Frustratingly, he leaves the characters adrift at the book’s end (literally, in two cases), with the reader wanting more. But throughout, the author takes what could have been dry genealogical research and skillfully converts it into a layered historical drama.
An engrossing beginning of what promises to be an involving generational saga about Irish immigrants.Pub Date: March 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9908019-4-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Manzanita Writers Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
32
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.D. Salinger
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.