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PARIS

For all its merits, Rutherfurd’s latest is too big and too professorial for comfort—Edmund White could have written his own...

Overstuffed yarn of the ville lumière from city-hopping epic-smith Rutherfurd (New York, 2009, etc.).

Rutherfurd’s latest is billed as Paris: The Novel, a designation with which the shades of Émile Zola and Victor Hugo might take issue. A novel, maybe—or maybe five novels rolled up into one big saucisson—but not the novel, DeMille-an or Zanuck-ian as it may sound. For Rutherfurd, the novel form seems to be an opportunity to erect a kind of scaffolding around a sequence of flash cards devoted to, in this case, the history of Paris, and there’s scarcely a paragraph of exposition that is not didactic at heart. Henry Ford, he takes pains to tell us, is “the motor manufacturer” (not “a motor manufacturer”), just so we’re sure we’re not talking about Henry Ford the doughnut baron of Chillicothe. The Knights Templar, for anyone who hasn’t read kindred spirit Dan Brown (though Rutherfurd is far and away the better writer), “were the guardians of huge deposits in many lands. From there, it was only a step to being bankers.” He even explains French to the French: "Dieudonné....It means ‘the gift of God.’ " Merci pour les explications, dude. Rutherfurd layers on the symbolism with a trowel: Not for nothing does the garçon at the book’s beginning share a name with a certain musketeer. And much of the writing telegraphs, passively telling rather than showing: “the thought of base blood entering the noble family of de Cygne was repugnant to him.” All that said, Rutherfurd’s sense of epic sweep is admirable, and any book that stretches from Caesar to May 1968 is bound to need a lot of room.

For all its merits, Rutherfurd’s latest is too big and too professorial for comfort—Edmund White could have written his own À la recherche du temps perdu in the same space.

Pub Date: April 23, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-385-53530-4

Page Count: 832

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 13, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013

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THE UNSEEN

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.

Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

Pub Date: April 7, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Biblioasis

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

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WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.

Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.

Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.

Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.

Pub Date: July 2, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013

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