There’s no getting around it: this is essential reading. Vollmann’s eccentric, impassioned historical dream visions are,...
The story of Jamestown Colony and the personal histories of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, among others, take center stage—in this huge and fascinating fourth installment in the indefatigable Vollmann’s ongoing serial novel Seven Dreams
Argall joins earlier volumes (The Ice-Shirt, 1990; Fathers and Crows, 1992; The Rifles, 1994) in a powerful (sometimes ponderous) indictment of the wrongs committed by colonizers in their encounters with native North American populations. Once again, Vollmann assembles materials gathered from multiple historical sources (here, William the Conqueror’s Doomsday Book and the writings of Thomas Jefferson and others), as well as invented ones by the series’ omniscient (though not at all objective) narrator “William the Blind” (a concept lifted from the medieval Scottish epic poem Wallace). After a lengthy prologue and somewhat briefer histories of earlier foreign interest in the Virginia territory, and of adventurers who would sail and settle there, the story itself settles into focusing on its several major characters. Chief among them are the powerful tribal leader Powhatan, his impulsive young daughter Amonute (a.k.a. “Pocahontas”) and crafty kinsman Opechancanough (“more subtle & redoubtable than Powhatan himself”), the itinerant, weak-willed Englishman (Smith) who is the Indian maiden’s unworthy first love, and the eponymous Samuel Argall, the satanic military commander and later deputy governor who introduces slavery and genocide into the pristine Virginia wilderness. Vollmann’s tendency to digress and fulminate is kept under firmer control than usual here (though the narrative proper is followed by extensive addenda, glossaries, and source notes). There are longueurs, but the tale picks up speed and clarity as it progresses, graced by arresting figurative language (“Powhatan’s greatest palace was long and narrow as a dog’s jaws,” etc.) and a brilliantly handled ornate period style. And his portrayal of Pocahontas—married off to an English tobacco planter and condemned to outcast status in the two worlds she moves fearfully between—assumes the shape of genuine tragedy.
There’s no getting around it: this is essential reading. Vollmann’s eccentric, impassioned historical dream visions are, despite frequent redundancies and occasional infelicities, slowly carving their niche among the present age’s most commanding and illuminating fictions.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-91030-9
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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