Brown and Kelly create a richly detailed world, but need to more seamlessly marry facts with story.
Brown, with assistance from researcher and co-author Kelly, debuts with this historical novel of piracy and Colonial America.
Young Maria Hallett, having lost both her parents, works as a governess to her aunt’s children in early 18th-century Cape Cod. Her friend Isaac Doane is employed at the novel’s namesake tavern, and although he is enamored of Ms. Hallett, his shyness prevents him from becoming her suitor. But that’s not the case for historical pirate “Black Sam” Bellamy, who strides ashore, swiftly sweeps Maria off her feet and leaves her with child while he goes plundering in the West Indies for several months. By the time he returns to the coast of Massachusetts, circumstances have changed for the worse, as the child has passed away and Maria is being held criminally accountable. Although the real Bellamy died in a storm before reaching land, Brown and Kelly imagine what would have happened had he lived and found his way back into Maria’s life. The book’s often gorgeous descriptions and impressive vocabulary help bring the world of Colonial New England to life, through its flora, fauna, geography and people. The characters populating Brown and Kelly’s world, both fictional and fictionalized, are imbued with great depth. The authors’ zeal to bring so much of their vast research to the page, however, creates problems for the narrative, as the story is consistently interrupted by italicized sections of commentary, some of which reads like informational footnotes and all of which is distracting if not beside the point. And while scene-setting is essential to a book such as this, too often the plot is forced to sit still for it, and too much of the action—including most of the actual pirating—takes place off the page.
Brown and Kelly create a richly detailed world, but need to more seamlessly marry facts with story.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-1452082097
Page Count: 272
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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