by Thomas Mallon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2015
Mallon’s version of history is close enough to fact to revive faded memories, while his imagining of who thought and said...
Covering a momentous several months in 1986, this is an intriguing, humorous, even catty backstage view of the Reagan presidency from an artisan of the historical novel.
Mallon (Watergate, 2012, etc.) picks up the political narrative a couple of years after his previous, Nixon-era novel. Reagan is preparing for his second summit with Gorbachev on nuclear disarmament. His wife, Nancy, who confers with her astrologer about the president’s actions and with Merv Griffin on everything else, wields considerable influence in the White House. Also perfectly coiffed and politically muscular is the $100 million widow of Averell Harriman, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, whose funding and machinations on the Democratic side expose the complex horse-trading ahead of that year’s midterm election. To a four-page list of historical figures, Mallon adds a few fictional ones tied mainly to the Iran-Contra spectacle and Washington’s gay insiders—dubbed the Homintern by Christopher Hitchens. The late journalist, a major character here and a subplot unto himself as he pursues the early inklings of Iran-Contra, was the dedicatee of Watergate and is described in this book’s acknowledgements as a “beloved friend.” The main plot, aside from history itself, concerns a popular president’s sudden faltering amid crises abroad and at home. Mallon doesn’t go far in plumbing the Reagan enigma that has stumped so many, but he creates revealing moments in the first couple’s marriage. Historical fiction at this high level satisfies the appetite for speculation or even titillation through restraint as much as research, and Mallon rarely overdoes it—though he seems to have a weakness for insults, as in this small sample: "Pity anyone near Teddy’s Cutty-Sarked breath during the delivery of all those aspirated aitches” (Hitchens on Edward Kennedy); “that little patent-leather martinet” (Nancy on John Tower); “a Fabergé egg that talks” (Pat Nixon on Nancy).
Mallon’s version of history is close enough to fact to revive faded memories, while his imagining of who thought and said what presents some of the coherence and delights of fiction without the excesses of those “what if” rethinks scribbled by Newt Gingrich et al.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-307-90792-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
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
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
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by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
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by Amor Towles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2016
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
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Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility (2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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edited by Amor Towles ; series editor: Otto Penzler
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