Engaging food for thought for Austen fans.
Bennett (The Perfect Visit, 2011), in his second work of historical fiction, explores Francis Rawdon-Hastings’ relationship to a young Jane Austen and her effect on him well after her death.
In a story that jumps back and forth between 1801 and 1823, Hastings—a real man known as Lord Moira from age 40 to his early 60s—was taken by two young, awe-inspiring women: Jane Austen and, later, the novel’s fictitious Vanessa Horwood. Austen, the budding British writer, and Horwood, a Canadian musician, share a certain likeness that Lord Moira cannot ignore. While Moira develops feelings for Horwood, her life becomes more entwined with Austen’s. As Moira attempts to mask his past flirtations with Austen, Horwood’s well-being is put at stake. Horwood, who is acquainted with Austen’s siblings, finds herself caught with a dark, secretive financial burden, a downfall of the Austen family that author Bennett embellishes for dramatic effect. With scholarly knowledge of Austen’s life and works, Bennett uses what little the world knows of Austen’s young life to his advantage and inserts some cleverly written pieces to the unfinished puzzle. Although unlikely, there’s a chance Moira and Austen may have shared an intimate connection during these years, and Bennett offers hypothetical explanations behind Austen’s earlier works and her mysterious personal life. Austen fans searching for another intriguing though debatable theory will find plenty to sift through here. Austen neophytes, however, will most likely need to conduct some additional research to appreciate this historical fiction that has hints of fan fiction. The cumbersome cast of characters, some real, some imagined, would be easier to digest with some previous knowledge of Austen’s life and works. Nevertheless, dialogue between characters is often captivating, and the book reads splendidly.
Engaging food for thought for Austen fans.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494475192
Page Count: 232
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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