Much to enjoy in this rural browse, though the land has been grazed before.
Fletcher debuts with the tale of a girl’s coming of age in Wales: as plentiful elements of richness and grace slowly give way to fairly standardized small-town gothic.
Evangeline Jones is only seven and living in Birmingham, England, when her pretty young mother dies suddenly, leaving the fatherless Evie orphaned. So it’s off to Wales with this alert and spunky little girl: she’s sent to the village of Cae Tresaint, or, more accurately, to the nearby farm of her maternal grandparents, where—from a viewpoint 21 years later, and expecting her first child—she will re-create for us the remarkable events of her first year on the farm, when she was eight. There will be the life of the farm itself—cattle, sheep, illness, changing weather, veterinary emergencies—to carry the story forward with much of genuine interest, but it’s the mystery of her own parentage—and of her own sexuality—that constitutes Evie’s deeper story. Bit by bit, she will piece together the mystery of her own father—who he was, where he came from, why he disappeared—and in so doing, will gradually learn more and more also about her mother, whose own childhood, and first love, also took place on this very farm. Traces of her absent mother are everywhere: she’s remembered by her own parents, of course, but remembered most fondly by the hired hand, Daniel (16 years older than Evie), by the strange but kind recluse, Billie Macklin, and even, though with ferocity rather than fondness, by the mean and crotchety shopkeeper, Mr. Phipps. Added to Evie’s absent parents is yet another absence—after, that is, the disappearance and presumed abduction of the pretty and flirtatious Rosie Hughes, an element in the plot serves only as adornment, not necessity, and that consequently does its large share in bringing on the element of melodrama as Evie faces trial both by fear and by fire.
Much to enjoy in this rural browse, though the land has been grazed before.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-393-05988-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
Like a pair of distressed designer jeans, the narrative's scruffiness can feel a little too engineered, but the narrator's...
A young woman with a knack for trick shooting heads west in the late 1800s to track down her outlaw brother.
Jessilyn Harney, the folksy narrator of Larison’s third novel (Holding Lies, 2011, etc.), has grown up watching her family lose its grip on its prairie homestead: Her mother died young, and her father is an alcoholic scraping by with small cattle herds. He’s also persistently at loggerheads with Jess' brother, Noah, who eventually runs off to, if the wanted posters are to be believed, lead a Jesse James–style criminal posse. So when dad dies as well, there’s nothing for teenage Jess to do but head west to find her brother, which she does disguised as a man. (“A man can be invisible when he wants to be.”) Her skill with a gun gets her in the good graces of a territorial governor (Larison is stingy with place names, but we’re near the Rockies), which ultimately leads to Noah and a series of revelations about the false tales of accomplishment that men cloak themselves with. Indeed, Jess’ success depends on repeatedly exploiting false masculine bravado: “I found no shortage of men with a predilection for gambling and an unfounded confidence in their own abilities with a sidearm,” she writes. The novel’s plot is a familiar Western, with duels, raids, and betrayals, brought thematically up to date with a few scenes involving closeted sexuality and mixed-race relationships. But its main distinction is Jess’ narrative voice: flinty, compassionate, unschooled, but observant about a violent world where men “eat bullets and walk among ghosts.” The dialogue sometimes lapses into saloon-talk truisms (“Men is all the time hiding behind words”; “Being a boss is always knowing your true size”). But Jess herself is a remarkable hero.
Like a pair of distressed designer jeans, the narrative's scruffiness can feel a little too engineered, but the narrator's voice is engaging and down-to-earth.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2044-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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