In a novel so awed by the great and near-great, ordinary human characters are outgunned.
An Irish-American from Chicago, fleeing an abusive relationship, moves to Paris on the eve of World War I.
This sequel to Kelly’s Galway Bay (2009) is exhaustively researched, but much of that research is shoehorned onto the page; too often, otherwise-engaging characters become docents spouting informational tracts about all things Irish. In 1903, after battling her way from the switchboard to a career as a fashion designer for Montgomery Ward, narrator Nora Kelly (based on the author’s great-aunt) falls prey to the blandishments of Tim McShane, a charismatic gambler years her senior who initiates her sexually and relegates her to the role of occasional mistress while he squires vaudeville star Dolly McKee publicly. Eight years later, Nora, weary of the arrangement, tries to get free. But McShane, an affable but harmless blowhard in the opening chapters (how else could the independent-minded Nora have fallen for him?), appears to have undergone a not entirely convincing Jekyll and Hyde transformation: He tries to strangle Nora. Aided by Dolly, whom McShane also abuses, Nora escapes to Paris, where she earns a living copying designs for a couturier who serves the near-wealthy and leading tours of Paris for ladies who come to shop. Along the way, she encounters Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, Henri Matisse, Helen Keller, Coco Chanel and countless other icons. She also falls in love with Peter, a shy, austere professor at the Irish college of Paris, which also is an outpost of the Irish independence movement. Although Nora demonstrates the requisite degree of pluck—at one point she launders funds for the Irish rebellion—she never seems to mature nor gain much insight into the political, amorous and cultural tumult swirling around her. Even as she witnesses the onset of the Great War, serves as a nurse and is privy to an astounding quarrel between Yeats and his muse, Maud Gonne, over his famous poem “Easter, 1916,” Nora remains a cipher.
In a novel so awed by the great and near-great, ordinary human characters are outgunned.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2913-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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