The lives of the characters provide a lengthy and in-depth (yet inviting) look at a collision of worlds.
Tomilson presents a historical novel about European/Canadian contact in the 19th century.
Gugweelaks is a member of the Tsimshian tribe. His early life in the 1800s in what is modern day Canada is based around hunting, fishing, and adhering to traditional rules of conduct. As an Elder in the Eagle Clan (the youngest elder, at 15), Gugweelaks knows much about the stories of his people, and when he is inducted into a group called the Cannibal Dancers, he is greatly honored. With the advent of European traders, the area undergoes upheaval. The Whites (as Gugweelaks refers to them) introduce two major problems: guns and alcohol. The former allows deadly power to be abused by whoever happens to have such a weapon in their hands. The latter causes great harm to the Indigenous people that consume it. Christianity, by way of Anglican missionaries, also heralds changes. Gugweelaks befriends a kindly missionary named William Duncan, who learns the Tsimshian language. Duncan in turn teaches Gugweelaks to write and speak English, and even has Gugweelaks baptized as “Jack.” Eventually, Duncan seeks to build a peaceful, morally upright village in a location called Metlakatla; over time, Duncan and Gugweelak’s relationship deteriorates. With several characters based on real people, the story deftly details the clash of cultures: Duncan is outraged when Gugweelaks interprets a biblical story as being akin to an Indigenous myth; Gugweelaks’ comparison is completely understandable, though Duncan is so upset he gestures as if “he was shaking seaweed off his arms after a swim.” While such moments illuminate the time period, other scenes grow protracted with little payoff. Gugweelaks, as the narrator, tends to overshare: At one point, when he overhears others, he tells the reader his “peace changed to loneliness as I listened to their laughter.” Such statements make for some dense passages. Nevertheless, the text captures the essence of a bizarre and frightening time of change.
The lives of the characters provide a lengthy and in-depth (yet inviting) look at a collision of worlds.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781773740782
Page Count: 582
Publisher: Luke Warmwater Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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
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