A fascinating immigrant’s tale of the turmoil and restlessness that come from beginning life anew.
In his sweeping novel, Cheevers gives voice to the struggles endured by Irish immigrants.
The Delaney family made their home on an Irish peat bog. When an invitation to New York arrives from an uncle, the question of immigration ignites a conflict between Big Jimmy Delaney and his 14-year-old son, Jimmy. The younger Jimmy, the story’s protagonist, is determined to make the voyage with or without his parents. A decision is made: Big Jimmy, his wife Mary and Jimmy will head to New York City, leaving the two younger sons in an orphanage to finish school. The long voyage tightens the tension between father and son, as young Jimmy learns how to provide for himself with help from the sailors on board. Upon arrival in New York City, the family discovers that the uncle has died; after Mary dies of a miscarriage for which Jimmy blames his father, Jimmy severs ties with his father for good. Cheevers relates the ordeal in a readable Irish lilt, which fades as Jimmy gets farther from his homeland. Strong-willed and capable, Jimmy is most at ease when he’s on the move; over the years he finds jobs as a seaman’s mate on a river steamer and as a telegrapher for the railroad. Cheevers fashions Jimmy into a well-rounded, relatable character through his speech and the wanderlust that ultimately drives his life. Though Jimmy has few genuine friends, his ability to maneuver friendships to his advantage sets him apart from similar protagonists. Through his alliances Jimmy attends college in the East, then heads west to become a journalist in California. Along the way Jimmy has an unlikely though not implausible encounter with one of his brothers who’d been left behind in Ireland. The brother’s rage at his father has led him to become a prizefighter. The discussion between the brothers shows how far Jimmy has moved from his conflict with his father—and yet the conflict still keeps him on the move. His cunning, drive and independence land him in on the West Coast, but his desire to keep moving on continues. While the conclusion fits, it leaves readers looking for closure, because Jimmy, compelling as ever, is once again starting over.
A fascinating immigrant’s tale of the turmoil and restlessness that come from beginning life anew.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: William Cheevers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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