Although the contemporary story becomes an annoying distraction, Davenport does right by Rembrandt and his genius—and that...
Rembrandt in England, locked in a fierce struggle with the poet Andrew Marvell for artistic preeminence—and the attentions of a beautiful woman: all in this outing from Davenport (a.k.a. British thriller writer James Long: Silence and Shadows, 2001, etc.).
It’s 1662, and the 56-year-old Rembrandt is bankrupt. Fleeing his creditors, the notorious homebody becomes an accidental stowaway on a ship bound for Hull (the evidence for Rembrandt’s residence in England is flimsy, but Davenport, otherwise, stays close to the historical record). Ship’s captain Dahl promises to pay Rembrandt’s passage home if he likes the portrait he has commissioned. Dahl’s intermediary is another passenger, the Dutch-speaking Marvell, at first glance a self-important parliamentarian. Painting the captain is a tedious chore; painting his wife, the beautiful Amelia, the challenge of a lifetime. And Marvell gives Rembrandt the opportunity. Working in different mediums, each man will pay tribute to Amelia’s beauty, and the subject herself will decide the winner. This may all sound rather loopy, and the identification of Amelia as the Coy Mistress of Marvell’s most famous poem may be several degrees too cute, but it works surprisingly well on the page. Davenport finds a convincing voice for Rembrandt, and the artistic rivalry becomes all the juicier thanks to the serenely manipulative Amelia. What works far less well is a storyline set in 2001 that gets equal time. Here, hot-blooded young artist Amy Dale, a descendant of Dahl’s, joins a crew that’s restoring the grand country house once built by Amelia. Amy seduces her scarred but sexy co-worker Don, who may or may not be bad news. The two stumble on Rembrandt’s wall paintings, but their subsequent sleuthing never blends with a surrounding melodrama that churns out two murders and one near-miss (all, curiously, involving a chain saw).
Although the contemporary story becomes an annoying distraction, Davenport does right by Rembrandt and his genius—and that gives his fantasy a glow of its own.Pub Date: April 29, 2003
ISBN: 0-553-38206-3
Page Count: 325
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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