A sprightly, winning historical novel about an unexpected romance—between a young woman and her own power.
Set in Gilded Age New England, Forbes’ debut novel follows teenage Penelope Stanton as she struggles through dubious attachments and financial ruin to become a suffragist leader.
“Imagine being sent to a party with a gun pointed at your head.” In 17-year-old Penelope’s case, the gun is metaphorical but a burden all the same—her father’s bank has suffered huge losses during the Panic of 1893, and her erstwhile fiance, Sam Haven, has cut her dead because of it. Penelope’s mother is determined to marry her off quickly to save the family’s fortunes. But instead of meeting an eligible bachelor, Penelope falls for rakish, married Edgar Daggers, whose stolen kisses turn her into “ice cream melting.” She has just enough willpower to resist becoming Edgar’s “personal secretary” in New York and flees to Boston with her best friend Lucinda, who wants to “join forces with the women who seek to improve the lives of women.” Through Lucinda, Penelope meets bloomer-wearing activist Verdana Jones. She shocks Verdana—and herself!—by cogently defending “Irrational Dress,” saying that “corsets and petticoats offer some structure...in a world that unravels as I speak.” Verdana thinks they’re a great team, and soon Penelope finds herself caught up in the fledgling women’s rights movement, even as the tempting Edgar Daggers comes back into her life. What will win out in the end—clandestine love or Penelope’s desire for independence? A delight from beginning to end, Forbes’ novel is full of funny, authentic moments, like poor Penelope’s ignominious accident when she tries to ride a bicycle in skirts, and striking metaphors (“an uncomfortable silence loomed...thick as soda bread”). Forbes paints the smallest details of fin de siècle society—the pop music, the interior décor, the “Beecham’s Pills” Penelope takes for a hangover. In fact, the book feels like it was written at the time, reading like an alternate, feminist take on The House of Mirth’s “well-born lady in reduced circumstances” with a decidedly happier ending.
A sprightly, winning historical novel about an unexpected romance—between a young woman and her own power.Pub Date: March 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946409-07-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: Penmore Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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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