Smith's 23rd doorstopper—nearly all of them about South Africa (Elephant Song, Golden Fox, etc.)—gallops swiftly through the action and flying blood his fans have come to relish, though for the first time Smith sets his story in Egypt 2,000 years before Christ. Readers hoping for descriptive riches on the order of Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings will quickly find their hopes flattened by the banal style and fountaining clichÇs here, which give only a faint sense of the domestic particulars of daily life in those days, and will haave to satisfy themselves with Smith's sheer storytelling. At the start, Smith's narrator is the 30-year-old eunuch Taita, chief slave of Lostris, the 14-year-old daughter of Lord Intef. Lostris's breasts are ``the size and shape of ripe figs just ready for plucking, and tipped with rose garnets,'' while she has ``the neatest, tightest pair of buttocks in all Egypt.'' Lostris is beloved of young warrior Tanus, whose bow is so stiff only he can draw it and then loose three arrows before the first has landed. These matters once in place, the story will spread over three decades, during which Taita, Tanus, and Lostris put up with the machinations of her father, My Lord Intef, who is Grand Vizier; Lostris marries the Pharaoh; Tanus becomes supreme commander of the armies and battles the Hyksos invaders; he and Lostris have a moment of madness in the tombs of Tras as Tanus sires Memnon; the Pharaoh dies in battle, Lostris becomes queen, Tanus loses a major battle against the Hyksos and then his life to the magical blue sword that can pierce any soft bronze sword or shield; Memnon becomes pharaoh and Lostris dies. Brightly colored, sweeping escapism. (First printing of 150,000)
Pub Date: March 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-10612-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
Unrelenting gloom relieved only occasionally by wrenching trauma; somehow, though, Hannah’s storytelling chops keep the...
Hannah’s sequel to Firefly Lane (2008) demonstrates that those who ignore family history are often condemned to repeat it.
When we last left Kate and Tully, the best friends portrayed in Firefly Lane, the friendship was on rocky ground. Now Kate has died of cancer, and Tully, whose once-stellar TV talk show career is in free fall, is wracked with guilt over her failure to be there for Kate until her very last days. Kate’s death has cemented the distrust between her husband, Johnny, and daughter Marah, who expresses her grief by cutting herself and dropping out of college to hang out with goth poet Paxton. Told mostly in flashbacks by Tully, Johnny, Marah and Tully’s long-estranged mother, Dorothy, aka Cloud, the story piles up disasters like the derailment of a high-speed train. Increasingly addicted to prescription sedatives and alcohol, Tully crashes her car and now hovers near death, attended by Kate’s spirit, as the other characters gather to see what their shortsightedness has wrought. We learn that Tully had tried to parent Marah after her father no longer could. Her hard-drinking decline was triggered by Johnny’s anger at her for keeping Marah and Paxton’s liaison secret. Johnny realizes that he only exacerbated Marah’s depression by uprooting the family from their Seattle home. Unexpectedly, Cloud, who rebuffed Tully’s every attempt to reconcile, also appears at her daughter’s bedside. Sixty-nine years old and finally sober, Cloud details for the first time the abusive childhood, complete with commitments to mental hospitals and electroshock treatments, that led to her life as a junkie lowlife and punching bag for trailer-trash men. Although powerful, Cloud’s largely peripheral story deflects focus away from the main conflict, as if Hannah was loath to tackle the intractable thicket in which she mired her main characters.
Unrelenting gloom relieved only occasionally by wrenching trauma; somehow, though, Hannah’s storytelling chops keep the pages turning even as readers begin to resent being drawn into this masochistic morass.Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-57721-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Lunge-Larsen and Preus debut with this story of a flower that blooms for the first time to commemorate the uncommon courage of a girl who saves her people from illness. The girl, an Ojibwe of the northern woodlands, knows she must journey to the next village to get the healing herb, mash-ki- ki, for her people, who have all fallen ill. After lining her moccasins with rabbit fur, she braves a raging snowstorm and crosses a dark frozen lake to reach the village. Then, rather than wait for morning, she sets out for home while the villagers sleep. When she loses her moccasins in the deep snow, her bare feet are cut by icy shards, and bleed with every step until she reaches her home. The next spring beautiful lady slippers bloom from the place where her moccasins were lost, and from every spot her injured feet touched. Drawing on Ojibwe sources, the authors of this fluid retelling have peppered the tale with native words and have used traditional elements, e.g., giving voice to the forces of nature. The accompanying watercolors, with flowing lines, jewel tones, and decorative motifs, give stately credence to the story’s iconic aspects. (Picture book/folklore. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-90512-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
