A pleasantly engaging read for historical fiction fans.
Bernard’s novel chronicles the life of Mary Elizabeth Frederica Mackenzie, the high-spirited daughter of Lord Seaforth, chieftain of the Highlands clan Mackenzie.
By June of 1803, 20-year-old Mary Mackenzie has had her fill of the island of Barbados. She and her family have been there for two years, ever since her father was appointed colonial governor of the island, the Crown’s Caribbean center of trade. (Barbados’ wealth is derived from its prodigious production of sugar cane, farmed by African slaves.) It is on the island where Mary first confronts the cruelty with which the British colonists treat their slaves. To her dismay, she discovers that even her beloved father, beset by gambling debts and in need of an income-producing investment, has purchased a plantation and 200 slaves. She longs to return to her life in the Highlands and London. Fortunately, she meets and falls in love with someone who can grant that wish: the esteemed Sir Samuel Hood, a commodore in the Royal Navy. After their nuptials, Mary and Samuel set sail for England, establishing residence in Samuel’s elegant London townhouse. Yet a shadow hangs over the couple’s happiness in the form of a 100-year-old frightening prediction from legendary Highlands seer Coinneach Odhar. A free thinker with little regard for religion, Mary has steadfastly refused to give credence to the legendary prophecy of doom (“I did not believe in the curse. I refused to”). But as she suffers one personal tragedy after another, Mary begins to question her skepticism. This second novel in Bernard’s Historic Women of the Highlands series is rooted in historical sources (including the letters and diary of the real Mary Mackenzie) and brought to vivid life by the author’s imaginative and well-paced prose. The poignant, highly dramatic family saga paints a detailed period portrait of the era’s luxurious upper-class British lifestyle and is nicely peppered with appearances from luminaries of the day. It’s gratifying to witness the independent Mary growing into a forceful standard bearer for her family as she lays claim to her position as clan chieftain, the first woman to do so.
A pleasantly engaging read for historical fiction fans.Pub Date: July 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781685134761
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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