A well-crafted family tale that fails to fully transport readers to another era.
A young, privileged couple swap their comfortable existence in early-20th-century Massachusetts for Illinois farming country in this debut historical novel.
It is 1913, and Ken Adams is just about to graduate from college. Tall, athletic, and smart, he lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, and is the grandson of Owen Adams, a local business tycoon and founder of the Adams Group, a conglomerate of ventures “devoted to exploiting new inventions.” The family thinks that Ken is primed to join the business, but he is keen to make his way independently. He is introduced to Louise Converse and is immediately smitten. When Stephen, Louise’s uncle, suggests a new life for Ken working in a bank servicing the farming community in Bloomington, Illinois, the couple seize the opportunity, marry, and travel west. The story details how Ken and Louise establish themselves in rural Illinois and start a family of their own—two boys, David and Gregory, and a girl, Catherine, who, growing older, seek their own independence. The tale is loosely tacked to a historical backdrop: The Adams family faces two world wars and the Depression. But the novel never offers enough historical details to immerse the audience in another time period. There are some beautifully nostalgic scenes that pin the narrative to early-20th-century America, such as the vignette of the milkman going about his rounds at the story’s opening: “Nicholas, the milkman, came down the street, stopping at nearly every home to leave milk in the metal boxes on front porches and retrieve empty bottles. The old horse that pulled the wagon knew every step of the route.” Yet, despite Brown’s obvious talent for descriptive writing, such passages are all too few, and on occasion the tale feels as if it could have been set at any time in modern history due to the setting being insufficiently depicted. But while the storyline may not be gripping or complex—this for the most part is a tale of everyday life—it succeeds in capturing the strengths of familial bonds, particularly those between fathers and sons. The book is absorbing but ultimately offers few surprises within the generic context of an American small-town drama set in the 20th century.
A well-crafted family tale that fails to fully transport readers to another era.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5456-2812-6
Page Count: 414
Publisher: Mill City Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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