An often fun, if overpopulated, novel featuring bawdy melodrama, derring-do and political intrigue.
Johnson’s (The Seeds of Love...and War: Still Shaggin’ for a Shillin’, 2009, etc.) most recent historical novel views the American Revolution through the eyes of the Founding Fathers—after tankards of ale and trysts with waterfront doxies.
One of the more impressive and confounding aspects of this novel is the size and scope of its cast. The characters include such real-life luminaries as Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere, as well as various fictional workingmen and -women of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, including Big Bessie Clump and Amanda Griffith (of the Bunch of Grapes Tavern and the Snug Harbor Tavern, respectively); candle maker Zeke Teezle; and Amos, an African-American barman. Some 25 characters populate the narrative, most driven by the pursuit of liberty and following the axiom “that men are driven to drink if they are mad, sad, happy or horny.” According to the novel’s opening lines, “the doctrines of liberty and tyranny, superstition and enlightenment, wealth and poverty were clashing.” The overarching plot, framed by the Boston Massacre (1770) and the Boston Tea Party (1773), focuses on the political and economic, as well as the libidinous, tensions of the time. Adams, Hancock and Revere frequent houses of ill repute, away from the prying eyes of Tory spies, as they hatch a plan to oust their Colonial oppressors and the administration of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson. One intriguing technique they employ is propaganda; for example, when Revere unveils his now-famous engraving of the Boston Massacre, Adams recommends adding “a few musket barrels sticking out of the second story windows” of the local Custom House; Hancock requests that a sign on that building be changed to read “Butcher’s Hall,” a move that another character says “guarantees a noose will be placed around the necks of those redcoats—and perhaps a customs officer for good measure.” However, Johnson’s female characters, and their overexposed décolletage, transform this story of the American Revolution into a Gothic tale reminiscent of a Hammer horror film, in which women with perky bosoms are paired off with bloodthirsty, lusty men. Ultimately, Johnson’s apparent effort to expose the differences between the classes largely consists of filles de joie conspiring to lure the men of Boston into the sack.
An often fun, if overpopulated, novel featuring bawdy melodrama, derring-do and political intrigue.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500387624
Page Count: 676
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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