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MARY MCGREEVY

Name: MARY MCGREEVY
Author: Walter Keady
ISBN: 1-878448-83-8

by Walter Keady ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

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A freethinking woman turns a rural community in the west of Ireland on its head, in this quaint but unremarkable tale by Keady (Celibates and Other Lovers, not reviewed). It’s the early 1950s when Sister Mary Thomas emerges from the convent to be with her father in his last days, then drops her habit to resume life as Mary McGreevy, a red-haired, green-eyed beauty who immediately sets all the men’s hearts aflutter. She inherits the family farm and does a first-rate job of running it, while an endless stream of admirers flocks to her door. The painfully shy footballer, the middle-aged bartender, the head teacher at the local school—even the new parish priest—come knocking, and each is served with more tea and flirtation than he can handle. But Mary knows her own mind, and in spite of her winsome ways, she’s determined never to marry. This choice, unique in that time and place though it is, might have been acceptable to her neighbors . . . had she not chosen to bear a child. Her adamant refusal to name the father only fans speculation, and every one of her admirers comes to feel the heat. The schoolmaster is the first primary suspect, even though he’s recently married (to a woman who fancies Mary herself). But in time the finger of blame points to the priest—a caring, thoughtful man whose frequent visits to her farm, fueled by a private belief that Mary may be possessed, have not gone unnoticed. Denounced to the archbishop, the brokenhearted cleric is removed from his parish, and in the ensuing uproar the surprising, painful truth comes out. A fond depiction of Irish country life, but the surfeit of country characters results in more than a few caricatures. The heroine herself, for all her musical laughter and ankle-flashing, remains something of a cipher as well.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 1-878448-83-8

Page Count: 260

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE AGITATOR
by Walter Keady

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DOWRY
by Walter Keady

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THE SNOW CHILD

by Eowyn Ivey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2012

A fine first novel that enlivens familiar themes of parenthood and battles against nature.

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A couple struggling to settle in the Alaskan wilderness is heartened by the arrival of the child of their dreams—or are they literally dreaming her?

Jack and Mabel, the protagonists of Ivey’s assured debut, are a couple in their early 50s who take advantage of cheap land to build a homestead in Alaska in the 1920s. But the work is backbreaking, the winters are brutally cold and their isolation only reminds them of their childlessness. There’s a glimmer of sunshine, however, in the presence of a mysterious girl who lurks near their cabin. Though she’s initially skittish, in time she becomes a fixture in the couple's lives. Ivey takes her time in clarifying whether or not the girl, Faina, is real or not, and there are good reasons to believe she’s a figment of Jack and Mabel’s imaginations: She’s a conveniently helpful good-luck charm for them in their search for food, none of their neighbors seem to have seen the girl and she can’t help but remind Mabel of fairy tales she heard in her youth about a snow child. The mystery of Faina’s provenance, along with the way she brightens the couple’s lives, gives the novel’s early chapters a slightly magical-realist cast. Yet as Faina’s identity grows clearer, the narrative also becomes a more earthbound portrait of the Alaskan wilderness and a study of the hard work involved in building a family. Ivey’s style is spare and straightforward, in keeping with the novel’s setting, and she offers enough granular detail about hunting and farming to avoid familiar pieties about the Last Frontier. The book’s tone throughout has a lovely push and pull—Alaska’s punishing landscape and rough-hewn residents pitted against Faina’s charmed appearances—and the ending is both surprising and earned.

A fine first novel that enlivens familiar themes of parenthood and battles against nature.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-316-17567-8

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
BLACK WOODS, BLUE SKY
by Eowyn Ivey

- BOOK REVIEW
TO THE BRIGHT EDGE OF THE WORLD
by Eowyn Ivey

- PROFILES
Alaska, Beautiful and Rugged, in ‘The Snow Child’

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THE HONEY-DON'T LIST

by Christina Lauren ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 24, 2020

When a book has such great comic timing, it's easy to finish the story in one sitting.

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A toxic workplace nurtures an intoxicating romance in Lauren’s (The Unhoneymooners, 2019, etc.) latest.

Rusty and Melissa Tripp are the married co-hosts of a successful home-makeover show and have even published a book on marriage. After catching Rusty cheating on Melissa, their assistants, James McCann and Carey Duncan, are forced to give up long-scheduled vacations to go along on their employers' book tour to make sure their marriage doesn’t implode. And the awkwardness is just getting started. Stuck in close quarters with no one to complain to but each other, James and Carey find that the life they dreamed of having might be found at work after all. James learns that Carey has worked for the Tripps since they owned a humble home décor shop in Jackson, Wyoming. Now that the couple is successful, Carey has no time for herself, and she doesn’t get nearly enough credit for her creative contribution to their media empire. Carey also has regular doctor’s appointments for dystonia, a movement disorder, which motivates her to keep her job but doesn’t stop her from doing it well. James was hired to work on engineering and design for the show, but Rusty treats him like his personal assistant. He’d quit, too, but it’s the only job he can get since his former employer was shut down in a scandal. Using a framing device similar to that of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, the story flashes forward to interview transcripts with the police that hint at a dramatic ending to come, and the chapters often end with gossip in the form of online comments, adding intrigue. Bonding over bad bosses allows James and Carey to stick up for each other while supplying readers with all the drama and wit of the enemies-to-lovers trope.

When a book has such great comic timing, it's easy to finish the story in one sitting.