Lovers, marriages, and high hopes are blasted by thunderous historic events in this fourth novel of the ``Bridges Over Time'' series (after Women of Ashdon, 1993). The English civil war and its aftermath form the backdrop for Anand's tale of doomed, sad, and betrayed lovers, brave souls scurrying or galloping ahead of murdering pursuers, and survivors of plague, fire, and mindless persecutions. The beautiful Indian girl Parvati (renamed a chaste ``Penelope''), slave to the captain of a privateer, had (literally) been swept into the arms of 40ish bachelor Ninian Whitmead, who rescued her from shipwreck on Cornwall's shores. The nearly drowned waif brings joy and passion to nice, drab Ninian, and he marries her. Ninian, a mild royalist, tries subterfuge and a somber Puritan visage to protect himself and his wife, but fanatic religious fervor, cresting as King Charles is executed, will take away his friends, his safety—and his beloved Parvati, denounced as a witch. In 1664, their son Charles, a handsome, amoral scoundrel, impregnates and is forced to marry gentle Louisa, while spending more of his amorous time with Christabella, whom he'll marry after Louisa's forlorn death. In her short life Louisa had not only discovered the possibilities of intellectual adventures, but with Ninian, been introduced to a long estranged branch of the Whitmeads in Essex. Louisa's daughter Henrietta will find love with Benjamin, an Essex cousin, but father Charles and Benjamin's sire, driven by religious scruples (there was that heathen grandmother!) and plain greed (Charles had found Henrietta an ancient, rich husband) lie and betray to prevent a marriage. Henrietta dedicates herself to another lifelong commitment—to a woman. Throughout the chases, clashes, doings in high places, and appealing views of country life, brave women search for freedom. Like the others in the series, a Christopher Hibbert-style dynasty drama with reliable historical special effects.
Pub Date: June 20, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-10979-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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