An engrossing and historically grounded yarn.
Marquis’ (The Fourth Pularchek, 2017, etc.) historical novel, based on a true story, aims to rehabilitate the pirate Blackbeard, delivering a wealth of information about his era and place in history.
Edward Thache Jr., better known as the notorious, larger-than-life “Blackbeard,” was a British naval officer–turned–privateer and pirate. He and his fellow pirates, ardent Jacobites, hated the German interloper, George I, and the whole British establishment. Contrary to government propaganda of the day, Blackbeard was quite civilized—although, by design, he cultivated a very fearsome mien. This tale, beginning in 1715, shows how he preferred to simply approach a ship and terrify its captain and crew into surrendering; remarkably, this almost always worked. Meanwhile, Blackbeard’s nemesis, the odious Alexander Spotswood, lieutenant governor of Virginia, was determined to put an end to the pirate by whatever means. The protagonist’s beautiful love interest, Margaret of Marcus Hook, is a key element in the story, and other real-life historical characters in this densely populated book include Caesar, a slave that Blackbeard rescued and made his right-hand man; Stede Bonnet, successful Barbados planter–turned–hapless freebooter; and Black Sam Bellamy, a young hothead who saw pirates like himself as Robin Hood figures. Marquis writes quite well, but his real contribution with this book is historical, as the age of piracy was remarkably short, and Blackbeard’s turn on the stage was only two years: 1715 to 1717. The book’s subtitle, The Birth of America, is intriguing, and Marquis shows it to be more apt than one might suppose. A pirate ship, as he portrays it here, was a true democracy in many ways. He also shows how the colonists, many of whom had been born in the New World, had begun to identify themselves as American, not British; they were very ambivalent about the pirates, whom many saw as heroic figures. Overall, this is a thoroughly researched book that finely draws the pirate life; one can almost smell the bilge and salt air and taste the rum.
An engrossing and historically grounded yarn.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-943593-21-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mount Sopris Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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