A generally engaging addition to the expanding library of historical fiction.
Debut Canadian novelist Cameron, inspired by stories from her grandparents and uncles, pays homage to the early settlers of Ontario’s northern territory.
This novel celebrates the strength of ordinary people in the face of extraordinary circumstances. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Canadian government, anxious to develop the northern reaches of its Ontario province, began selling cheap acreage to those willing to homestead, clear the vast forests of a rather unforgiving, lonely terrain, and work in the mineral-rich mines in the north. In England, Annie Larsen Kidd’s husband, Jim, sees this as the opportunity they’ve been seeking—a way for the financially struggling young family to finally secure their own home and provide a future for their children: “Listen to this!” he says. “Ye can buy land fo’ fifty cents an acre and just pay a quarter of the price in cash.” Reluctantly, Annie packs up her three children and follows him to New Ontario, where she discovers that he’s built them a rustic, two-room log cabin; their nearest neighbor is a couple of miles away. Thus begins a prototypical immigrant tale of poverty, frustration, and perseverance. Cameron’s focus is on the details of Annie’s daily life: the milestones (including two more births) and the more mundane, repetitive chores. Although the story is light on action, and Annie is the only three-dimensional character, Cameron’s simple, third-person narrative works well to bring readers into the long-lost moments of a past century. There are some compelling sections, when the major events of the era wreak havoc on the small, isolated village; Cameron depicts a devastating forest fire, World War I, and a lethal outbreak of Spanish Flu through graphic imagery, as in this description of Jim’s arrival at the front line in France: “The fields around them were littered with corpses and decomposing body parts; the dead left to decompose where they fell.” In the “Author’s Notes,” Cameron says, “I wanted to put flesh on the bones of those early pioneers and let them live again.” In this, she succeeds.
A generally engaging addition to the expanding library of historical fiction.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-77180-154-6
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Iguana Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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