The appeal of Semsch’s novel is evident at the end when, knowing great changes lie ahead for the nation and its soldiers,...
This multigenerational epic follows heroine Julia Crockett’s journey from tomboy Army brat to military wife and beyond, from the Great Depression through Vietnam.
Historical novelist Semsch (The Lees of Menokin, 2009, etc.) allows her main character to be unlikable, manipulative, overly ambitious and irresistible in the mold of Gone with the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara. “I want to be a general’s wife,” oft-abrasive Julia commands her colonel husband. Fortunately, Semsch’s deft depiction of the preteen who dreams of being a soldier nearly 50 years before women are allowed to do so provides enough context to Julia’s harsh manner and choices that the reader can’t help but wait and hope for her aha moment. But while the novel’s leading lady is compelling, she is inconsistent. Julia’s Catholicism becomes a stumbling block to true love, though Semsch hasn’t established the Church’s influence prior to wielding it as a plot device. The novel’s rawest, most memorable moments involve men at war. A soldier on reconnaissance in Korea deduces the nearby enemy is Chinese because he smells garlic cooking. Another allows himself to be lured into an ambush to put a wounded horse out of its misery. Julia’s gentle brother watches a young Vietnamese boy run away and thinks “what a sad thing that a child should fear him because he was an American.” Seconds later, he is blown to bits by a grenade the boy has left at his feet. These spare, searing scenes are perfectly executed, as is Semsch’s depiction of the luxe life of officers and wives in Tehran during the early days of the Shah. The dialogue is occasionally melodramatic and characters too self-aware, as when Julia confides, “I don’t want the familiar, the things I know and trust to end.” But such lapses are outweighed by the story’s forward motion and the rare glimpse into the life and “noble calling” of the career military.
The appeal of Semsch’s novel is evident at the end when, knowing great changes lie ahead for the nation and its soldiers, the reader can’t help wondering how Julia Crockett will confront them.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1463510749
Page Count: 569
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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