THE WHITE

Name: THE WHITE
Author: Deborah Larsen
ISBN: 0-375-41359-6

by Deborah Larsen ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 19, 2002

There are some lovely moments (e.g., the poetry of grieving Seneca women’s laments for their dead); but, on the whole, The...

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The traditional narrative of Indian captivity is updated with only middling success in this thin first novel by a Pennsylvania poet and storywriter.

Based on the personal history of historical figure Mary Jemison (or Jamison) as told to Dr. James Seaver, The White is a quickly paced account of the experiences of an Irish immigrant woman who is alone kept alive (as “replacement” for a slain warrior) when she and her family are captured by “a Shawnee raiding party” in the barely settled Pennsylvania territory in 1758. In brief paragraphs that juxtapose the events of Mary’s life with her (often bitter) observations on her fate, later “reveries,” and remembered snatches of biblical stories and sayings, Larsen marches us through her heroine’s gradual bonding with the Senecas (to whom she’s “given” by her captors), marriages to the gentle Delaware brave Sheninjee (who dies young) and older Seneca hero Hiokatoo (for whom she bears five children), and stoical old age, when, having lived to bury several of her children, she finally realizes her dream of owning land, and refuses to be “redeemed” (i.e., reclaimed by white society), instead choosing to die, in her 80s, among “her people” the Senecas. This is rich material, but Larsen’s treatment of it is skimpy. She repeatedly sets up promising situations (a game of lacrosse reflecting “the very texture of assault”; an “execution” of offending white settlers), only to end up presenting them in elliptical summary form. Characterization is perfunctory at best, as are sporadic attempts at layering in such historical incidents as the betrayal of the “Six Nations” by double-talking representatives of England’s King George III: the sequence is essentially only a means of getting Mary to the Genesee Valley, where she lives out most of the years 1763–1833.

There are some lovely moments (e.g., the poetry of grieving Seneca women’s laments for their dead); but, on the whole, The White is an inchoate tale, neither successfully fictionalized nor fully imagined.

Pub Date: July 19, 2002

ISBN: 0-375-41359-6

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

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Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.