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The Golden Chalice Of Hunahpu

Name: The Golden Chalice Of Hunahpu
Author: William Vlach

A NOVEL OF THE SPANISH ATTACK ON THE MAYA

by William Vlach ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 28, 2012

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A historical novel about a Spanish conquistador’s invasion of Guatemala as narrated by three witnesses: a Mayan prince, the conquistador’s wife and a Dominican monk.
In 1524, Pedro de Alvarado entered Guatemala looking for riches; by 1529, he’d subdued the region, largely through wanton atrocities. This novel covers the period from Alvarado’s arrival through his death in 1541. The first narrator is Belehé, who tells the story of being a prince of the local Kaqchikel tribe and a longtime captive of the rival K’iché people. After he’s released, he rejoins his tribe, which is now allied with Alvarado against the K’iché. But the Spaniard’s excesses eventually lead the Kaqchikel to revolt and flee into the highlands. Belehé tells of the years just before and after Alvarado’s arrival, using the symbol-laden imagery of a culture with mysterious gods, and describes the destruction of his homeland in lyrical language (“And when they came, I was frightened, oh, my sons!...They came to warn us of the arrival of the gods”). The second narrator is Beatriz, Alvarado’s wife, whose tale is set during her husband’s governorship of Guatemala. As Spanish nobility, she looks down upon the natives while still recognizing their humanity. Her initial love for Alvarado turns to disgust as she sees what sort of man he is in the New World. The last narrator is Brother Domingo, whose superior, Father Bartolomé, is on a holy mission to convert the local natives. Domingo, torn between the duties of his faith and his own earthly needs, relates the last years of Alvarado’s life as the conquistador goes farther afield in search of glory and gold. Vlach, a practicing psychologist, has clearly done his research for this debut novel; the historical detail is impressive and the settings are vivid and realistic. However, the story doesn’t effectively build toward any sort of climax, which is unfortunate, given the rich material. There are also a few minor slip-ups: Meters are used as measures of distance about 150 years too early, the passage of time is hard to gauge, and the Spanish political situation could have been clearer.
An often enthralling look into a little-known period of history, but one that lacks the dramatic structure for maximum impact.

Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2012

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 246

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

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Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

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Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.