A richly imagined look at the high price one pre-modern woman pays for her independence.
A young woman fights for her sanity in Victorian England.
When Shumway’s debut historical novel opens in the spring of 1837, little Euphemia “Effie” Marten’s life is idyllic: She’s the daughter of Henry Marten of Marten House, the squire of Chilton Foliat, whose manor house and estate grounds form a beautiful backdrop to games Effie plays with her adored older brother, George. But their happiness shatters seven years later when a drunken George, after three unsuccessful terms at Oxford (and driven to despair by his enormous debts), drowns himself in the River Cherwell. His suicide not only brings pain and grief on his stunned family, but also brings George’s outstanding debts to the Marten estate. When Mr. Marten sells her horse to help pay George’s debts, Effie’s grief leads her to behave oddly. She sneaks out of the house dressed as a boy, is quickly discovered, announces her intention to travel to Oxford alone to pay her respects at her brother’s grave, and, when forbidden to do so by her father, throws things and bites her father’s hand. Her father promptly consigns her to the care of the family doctor and sends her to Warrinder House, a lunatic asylum in Lyme Regis (although she later scoffs at the term: “Asylum?” she says. “Warrinder House was neither more nor less than a gaol for wayward females—a dumping ground”). There, she encounters a somewhat predictable string of brutalities that convinces her to escape with a friend and work to expose the shady practices of Warrinder House. The novel’s period details are refreshingly well-researched (Jane Austen fans will find their beloved Lyme Regis faithfully drawn), and the state of Victorian mental health practices is harrowingly portrayed. Effie’s own shift into bizarre behavior seems a bit arbitrary (it comes as a surprise when we’re flatly told, early on, that she’s “slightly unbalanced”), but readers will end up rooting for her.
A richly imagined look at the high price one pre-modern woman pays for her independence.Pub Date: May 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484933305
Page Count: 272
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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