In her second novel, Baker (The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, 2009) follows the lives of two sisters whose family has always harvested salt that may or may not have magical powers over their Cape Cod community.
The town of Prospect (a town unbelievably untouched by modern life or tourists) depends on salt from the Gilly Salt Creek Farm for luck; the residents read their futures in the colors rising from Gilly salt thrown on the annual bonfire. Although the Gillys attend the same Catholic Church as everyone else in town, the feared power of their salt makes them permanent outsiders. As the book opens, the Gilly sisters have grown estranged. Younger, pretty Claire has married local rich boy (and her sister Jo's former boyfriend) Whit Turner, and joined local society, while Jo remains on the struggling farm. Why is Whit so anxious to buy Jo out and Claire so anxious to turn people against Jo's salt? Flashbacks show Jo has always been committed to harvesting the salt since her childhood in the 1950s, while book-smart Claire always wanted desperately to get away. Jo’s one childhood playmate was Whit, son of the wealthiest family in town. Whit’s mother wanted the children to have nothing to do with each other, and Jo’s mother was equally unenthusiastic. Shortly before charming but headstrong Whit left town for boarding school, he tried to proclaim his love to Jo. But having learned a family secret—one that most readers will guess way too soon—Jo broke off their budding romance. Years later, after Claire's boyfriend broke her heart by becoming a priest, a newly returned Whit wooed her. Twelve years later their marriage has soured. Then Whit begins an affair with a lonely young girl who has recently arrived in Prospect. When she becomes pregnant, Whit shows his darker side and all hell breaks loose. There are two fires, one accidental and one perhaps unintentionally lethal, before a discomfortingly amoral happy ending. Baker’s gift for richly embroidered fantasy only partially compensates for the novel’s inconsistency. Alice Hoffman–lite.
Pub Date: March 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-446-19423-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PLB 0-688-13166-2 King Midas And The Golden Touch ($16.00; PLB $15.63; Apr.; 32 pp.; 0-688-13165-4; PLB 0-688-13166-2): The familiar tale of King Midas gets the golden touch in the hands of Craft and Craft (Cupid and Psyche, 1996). The author takes her inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling, capturing the essence of the tale with the use of pithy dialogue and colorful description. Enchanting in their own right, the illustrations summon the Middle Ages as a setting, and incorporate colors so lavish that when they are lost to the uniform gold spurred by King Midas’s touch, the point of the story is further burnished. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-13165-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.
A star-crossed romance captures the turmoil of pre-revolutionary Iran in Seraji’s debut.
From the rooftops of Tehran in 1973, life looks pretty good to 17-year-old Pasha Shahed and his friend Ahmed. They’re bright, funny and good-looking; they’re going to graduate from high school in a year; and they’re in love with a couple of the neighborhood girls. But all is not idyllic. At first the girls scarcely know the boys are alive, and one of them, Zari, is engaged to Doctor—not actually a doctor but an exceptionally gifted and politically committed young Iranian. In this neighborhood, the Shah is a subject of contempt rather than veneration, and residents fear SAVAK, the state’s secret police force, which operates without any restraint. Pasha, the novel’s narrator and prime dreamer, focuses on two key periods in his life: the summer and fall of 1973, when his life is going rather well, and the winter of 1974, when he’s incarcerated in a grim psychiatric hospital. Among the traumatic events he relates are the sudden arrest, imprisonment and presumed execution of Doctor. Pasha feels terrible because he fears he might have inadvertently been responsible for SAVAK having located Doctor’s hiding place; he also feels guilty because he’s always been in love with Zari. She makes a dramatic political statement, setting herself on fire and sending Pasha into emotional turmoil. He is both devastated and further worried when the irrepressible Ahmed also seems to come under suspicion for political activity. Pasha turns bitterly against religion, raising the question of God’s existence in a world in which the bad guys seem so obviously in the ascendant. Yet the badly scarred Zari assures him, “Things will change—they always do.”
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-451-22681-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
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