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THE EULOGIST

Name: THE EULOGIST
Author: Terry Gamble
ISBN: 978-0-06-283989-3

by Terry Gamble ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 22, 2019

A sprawling yet richly drawn family saga.

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One woman lays bare her family’s secrets—for better or worse.

Set in the decades before the Civil War, Gamble’s (Good Family, 2009, etc.) novel centers around the Givens family, which has emigrated from Ireland to America, settling in Cincinnati. After their mother dies in childbirth and their father abandons them though they're still teenagers, the three Givens children—Olivia, who becomes a transgressive schoolteacher; James, a hustling businessman; and Erasmus, an itinerant preacher with a penchant for alcohol—must find a way to survive and thrive in a strange land. Told from Olivia’s perspective, the novel touches on abolition, immigration, religion (or lack thereof), courtship, and illness through the lens of one family’s history. As a character, Olivia feels true to the 19th century while defying and questioning societal norms as often as she can—for example, she reads, writes, and wears men’s clothing. When she meets Silas Orpheus, a doctor, her life changes in ways she could never have anticipated. Silas introduces her to Tilly, a talented slave owned by his brother. When her attempt to help Tilly goes horribly awry, all three Givens children become involved in the abolition movement to varying degrees. Gamble’s writing is delicate when she’s describing the natural world: “even at this hour, the air was as thick as cream,” and “soon the bats came out, dodging and darting, winging along the water’s edge where the insects were thick.” The plot can feel uneven at times, lingering too long on certain scenes and glossing over others too quickly. However, as the narrative structure becomes clearer, the novel’s proclivity for detail feels purposeful rather than tedious. It’s a book that would benefit from a reread—if only to catch all the hints along the way.

A sprawling yet richly drawn family saga.

Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-06-283989-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GOOD FAMILY
by Terry Gamble

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WATER DANCERS
by Terry Gamble

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EAST OF EDEN

by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 1952

But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.

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Tremendous in scope—tremendous in depth of penetration—and as different a Steinbeck as the Steinbeck of Burning Bright was from the Steinbeck of The Grapes of Wrath.

Here is no saga of the underprivileged—no drama of social significance. Tenderness, which some felt was inherent in everything Steinbeck wrote, is muted almost to the vanishing point in this story of conflict within character, impact of character on character, of circumstances on personalities, of the difficult acceptance of individual choice as against the dominance of inherited traits. The philosophy is intimately interwoven with the pace of story, as he follows-from New England to California over some fifty odd years-the two families which hold stage center. There are the Trasks, brothers in two generations, strangely linked, strangely at war the one with the other; there are the Hamiltons (John Steinbeck's own forebears), a unique Irish born couple, the man an odd lovable sort of genius who never capitalizes on his ideas for himself, the tiny wife, tart, cold-and revealing now and again unexpected gentleness of spirit, the burgeoning family, as varied a tribe as could be found. And- on the periphery but integral to the deepening philosophy which motivates the story, there is the wise Chinese servant scholar and gentleman, who submerges his own goals to identify himself wholly with the needs of the desolate Adam Trask, crushed by his soulless wife's desertion, and the twin boys, Cal, violent, moody, basically strong enough to be himself—and Aron, gentle, unwilling to face disagreeable facts, beloved by all who met him. In counterpoint, the story follows too the murky career of Adam's wife, Cathy—who came to him from a mysteriously clouded past, and returned to a role for which she was suited—as a costly whore, and later as Madame in Salinas most corrupt "house," where the perversions of sex ridden males were catered to—and cruelty capitalized upon.Shock techniques applied with rapier and not bludgeon will rule the book out for the tender-skinned.

But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1952

ISBN: 0142004235

Page Count: 616

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1952

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
STEINBECK IN VIETNAM
by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden

- BOOK REVIEW
STEINBECK
by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICA AND AMERICANS
by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson

- BOOK TO SCREEN
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- BOOK TO SCREEN
4 New Adaptations To Watch in October

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THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

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Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.