Intentionally or not, Tope’s free-spirited heroine’s lack of interest in her new husband’s life and her responsibilities to...
An undertaker’s new wife is distracted from the family business by a local murder in the Cotswolds.
Just a year into her marriage to Drew Slocombe, former housesitter Thea has grown weary of his expectations about her helping to raise his two children, like the indignities of preparing meals or reading stories at bedtime, and misses her independence. Drew’s latest client in his work as an undertaker for nature-focused Peaceful Repose offers Thea a bit of the intrigue she’s been missing. Linda Biddulph has hired Drew to help with services for her recently departed husband, Stephen, though with the caveat that Drew is not to tell her son, Lawrence, a big secret she’s hiding. Apparently Linda is the second wife of Stephen, who has a first family complete with a wife and two sons, Clovis and Luc, who’ve been hidden from Lawrence his whole life. Linda promises to reveal the news of Stephen’s first sons after the funeral is done with and things are settled down, but this isn’t enough for Clovis and Luc, who have heard of their not-so-dearly departed dad and show up on Thea and Drew’s door demanding to be involved. Drew’s promise to Linda doesn’t make Thea feel that she’s obliged to follow his lead, and it doesn’t hurt that Clovis is easy on the eyes and could perhaps provide the intrigue that Drew is lacking. As the Biddulph family drama heats up, Thea’s attention is deflected by the murder of a young woman on the grounds of Peaceful Repose. Juliet Wilson, beloved by the village of Broad Campden community, had no enemies who would wish her ill, and local police are willing to draw again on the mystery-solving skills Thea’s already demonstrated (Peril in the Cotswolds, 2018) to help connect Juliet’s death to a plausible suspect.
Intentionally or not, Tope’s free-spirited heroine’s lack of interest in her new husband’s life and her responsibilities to her family diminish rather than encourage a reader's investment in her ability to solve the crime.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7490-2337-9
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Casemate
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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