An engaging, if not absorbing, story of cultural adaptation, with sympathetic characters and ample historical detail.
Individuals of Hungarian, Sri Lankan and English descents cross paths in Alles-Crouch’s debut novel.
Beginning with a brief look in Sri Lanka at the lives of Englishman Robert Cross, his Hungarian wife, Erzsike, and their daughter, Beya, the book then quickly flashes back to World War II. In Hungary, young Erzsike, the daughter of affectionate parents, enjoys a life rich in tradition and compassion for others; her family even hides a Jewish professor from the Germans. Robert, born in London to a loving mother and a stern father with an iron fist, later moves with his family to Canada. World War II begins, and Robert goes to war at 18, displaying leadership qualities throughout his distinguished military service. Urged by friend and lover Rudi, Erzsike reluctantly flees her homeland and the barbarism of the Russians during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1945 in Ceylon, Harriet Meedeniya is captivated when she first lays eyes on Cyril Alvis, private secretary to the inspector of police whom Robert met during the war. They marry and have children, including fair-skinned Prema, an intelligent, resourceful boy eager to escape his ritualistically abusive father. Alles-Crouch’s novel is a timely reminder that revolution is not new, and it comes at a price. The tale is mostly well-told, with various plotlines neatly integrated, although an occasional passage seems out of place. The story spans decades without the feel of an epic sweep; despite war and revolution being factors, this isn’t historical fiction. The primary focus is on individuals of differing ethnic backgrounds, their reactions to circumstances beyond their control and their efforts to successfully adjust to a foreign culture. Robert admires Erzsike’s struggle to survive, yet after their marriage, she feels pressured to be more English, even changing her name to Elizabeth. The once–love-struck Harriet, inextricably linked to a wife-beating husband who nearly kills her, eventually finds life meaningless. Readers won’t be able to help but root for resilient Prema, who, unlike his mother, retains his humanity in the face of savagery, humiliation and neglect. Like smoke from a fire, he rises.
An engaging, if not absorbing, story of cultural adaptation, with sympathetic characters and ample historical detail.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-62901-025-0
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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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