Historically fascinating and emotionally gripping: another success for Davies.
A striking seventh novel from British scholar and critic Davies (Four Dreamers and Emily, 1997, etc.) examines the revolutionary passion of two women separated by 400 years.
When Olivia’s mother dies, the teenaged girl and her father acquiesce in the dead woman’s wish to be buried in the yard of Pinfold, the home that’s been in the family for generations. While digging a grave for the devout Quaker, the two come upon the remains of a 17th-century woman. More startling, and of particular interest to the archaeologists brought in, is the artifact she’s buried with: a scold’s bridle, a gruesome device of torture once used to silence troublesome women and heretics. For the stoic Olivia, fascination with the dead woman first serves as a distraction from the death of her mother, then turns into a more generalized obsession when she goes off to college and becomes a historian. Her unorthodox teaching methods and overt masculinity manner win her few friends, though the independent Olivia cares less about her contemporaries than about her mission to find the identity of the woman she unearthed all those years ago. When the skull of the woman identifies her as one Hannah Jones, Olivia begins searching in earnest. As historian/detective, she painstakingly uncovers documents that illuminate Hannah’s extraordinary life as one of England’s earliest Quaker proselytizers. With her “yoke-fellow” (wife and religious helpmate) Isabel Clarke, Hannah roamed the countryside as a religious and social anarchist, frequently tortured and imprisoned, until finally she was executed and buried in shame with the bridle. Using “found” documents, Davies builds an exacting portrait of the turbulent time and instills a quiet majesty in her subjects. Fierce, bewitching Hannah, humble Isabel, even misanthropic Olivia—all lend a compelling dignity to this little gem.
Historically fascinating and emotionally gripping: another success for Davies.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-7043-4659-1
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Women’s Press/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
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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