The subject of this immensely satisfying neo-Victorian (its Canadian author’s fifth novel and first to appear here) is the province of Newfoundland, whose complex political history is incarnated in memorable human form. The story is the generously imagined fictional biography of a real historical figure, Joseph Smallwood, the self-styled “Father of Confederation” who shepherded the former British dominion into full union with Canada in 1949. Johnston’s rich narrative is presented in three forms: Joe Smallwood’s own detailed recall of his life is punctuated by excerpts from the “Journal” of Shelagh Fielding, his lifelong friend and enemy (and, in an odd way, lover), a feisty independent newspaper columnist, and also by snippets from her hilarious “Condensed History of Newfoundland,” a mock-heroic and episodic chronicle that provides sardonic undercurrent to Smallwood’s candid account of his checkered career. The tale begins with Smallwood’s childhood in an embattled family dominated by his eternally drunken, Dickensian father Charlie and “born again” mother Minnie May; takes a critical turn when an anonymous letter falsely attributed to “Smallwood” causes his expulsion from the tony private school where he meets “Fielding” (which is how they address each other thereafter); and embraces Joe’s flirtation with socialism (at home and in America), efforts to unionize fishermen, rise to power (as “interim premier” under Confederation), and betrayal by the hired Latvian economist who involves his administration with “men who wound up . . . all but destroying the country I had sought them out to save.” Smallwood is a wonderfully convincing tragicomic figure, and Fielding an even better one: an embittered alcoholic enslaved to a secret she withholds throughout the pair’s 40-year love-hate relationship. Only in the parallel secret harbored by Smallwood (too nakedly derivative of a similarly crucial incident in Robertson Davies’s Fifth Business) does Johnston’s superb plot deviate from its overall power and originality. As absorbing as fiction can be—and a marvelous introduction to the work of one of our continent’s best writers.
Pub Date: July 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-49542-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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