A tender and historically engaging tribute to a family and 20th-century Newfoundland.
A semibiographical novel focuses on the life of the author’s mother, the daughter of a Newfoundland lighthouse keeper.
It is 1927, and Hannah Greene is 9 years old, one of nine siblings. Her father, Joe, like many of the men living in the small village of Point Verde, is a fisherman. It is a hardscrabble life. The work is dangerous, and Joe struggles to feed his large family. He wants to move to Boston, against the wishes of Hannah’s mother, Louise. Fortunately, Louise’s own mother has some strong connections to the powers that be, and Joe is offered a job as keeper of the Point Verde lighthouse. The position comes with a government salary, a house that will accommodate his family in comfort, food supplements, and a variety of other perks. When Hannah sees their new home, she is delighted. It has electricity and, even more spectacular, indoor plumbing. For the next 90 or so pages, readers witness the sometimes-amusing, sometimes-frightening adventures Hannah and her siblings experience during their years on the windy, often icy promontory of Point Verde. At 14, Hannah moves in with her maternal grandmother in the neighboring town of Placentia, where the teen’s social life, interests, and independence expand. During World War II, Newfoundland becomes an important military way station. When the United States builds a base near Placentia, it brings with it jobs and the influence of American culture. Although Ladolcetta’s primary characters are all members of his family, he introduces several fictional players to bolster the narrative with drama and context. He also embellishes the family stories, attributing to lead characters incidents that are culled from family lore and personal experiences. He sorts all of this out in one of his final chapters, “True Tales and Tall Tales.” Genial, conversational prose and the extensive use of dialogue maintain an engaging, in-the-moment, albeit ambling, pace. But most intriguing are the voluminous cultural details woven into the gentle novel—the daily routines, food (plenty of cod), celebrations, and unique idioms of the island. The book provides a useful glossary of local terminology and family photographs.
A tender and historically engaging tribute to a family and 20th-century Newfoundland.Pub Date: April 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-95-048132-3
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Tranquility Press
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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