As a prologue to the Harte legend, very thin gruel indeed.
The eighth installment of Bradford’s Harte Family Saga is a prequel to the first, A Woman of Substance (1979).
Close followers of the Harte story will recognize Shane Patrick Desmond O’Neill, known as Blackie, as dynasty founder Emma Harte’s early mentor and helper, who earns her lifelong loyalty. In 1899, Blackie, an orphan, emigrates from Ireland to Yorkshire at the age of 13. Offered a home by his kindly Uncle Patrick and his ailing Aunt Eileen, who live near Leeds, Blackie learns the building trade; he has ambitions to be an architect one day but mostly to be filthy rich. Series fans know that Emma, who shares Blackie’s ambition to get filthy rich, gets her start in Leeds, but Blackie will not meet her until three-quarters of the way in. While we’re waiting, Blackie encounters that Bradford staple, the older woman who relieves him of his virginity and then conveniently exits. Until about Page 150, no real excitement or suspense happens beyond minute descriptions of logistics, interiors, and English cuisine—heavy on the meat pies. At 17, Blackie is enlisted by a friend to help rescue fellow immigrant Moira Aherne from the “Ham Shank,” a dangerous neighborhood. Blackie suspects, based on her upper-class accent and dress, that lovely Moira has an ulterior motive for slumming with the working class, but any hopes of Moira as a source of conflict are soon dashed. None of the privileged and beautiful people in this book harbor sinister motives because Bradford seems so intent on vindicating them. Case in point: Lord Robert Lassiter, an earl who takes up a sizable and at first seemingly unrelated chunk of the book. This handsome magnate who has parlayed his family fortune into another fortune proposes to the fetching Vanessa, 17 years his junior, while still married to Lady Lucinda Lassiter. Bradford implies that Lucinda, the mother of Robert’s heir and spare, deserves to be blackmailed into a divorce. The rushed denouement obscures some genuinely interesting logistics.
As a prologue to the Harte legend, very thin gruel indeed.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-8745-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
IN THE NEWS
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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
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