Ambitious, engrossing, full of melodramatic thunder.
A richly imagined answer to a vexing question: Why did the mighty ships of the Spanish Armada fail in their mission?
Finney, the Cambridge-educated author of dazzling Elizabethan-era historicals (Unicorn’s Blood, 2001, etc.), swashbuckles right into the story: as Philip of Spain threatens to take England and all its riches by force, the equally bellicose English plan their defense. Alas, they lack sufficient saltpeter for the manufacture of gunpowder; English dealers in armaments may well be indirectly supplying the Spaniards, and Queen Elizabeth’s court is crawling with Papist traitors and spies of all stripes. Is Simon Anriques—a Jew born in the New World, known in England as Simon Ames, and seemingly her Majesty’s loyal servant—really a double agent? Just ask the pious Portuguese torturer into whose hands he falls and his silent minions, who pour gallons of water down Anriques’s gagging throat, stopping just before his belly bursts. (Squeamish souls take note: Finney relishes brutality—the galley scenes, in which Anriques later figures, are rife with flogging, festering wounds, more torture, and a wee touch of forced sodomy.) Anriques’s African slave, Merula, tends to his sickly wife Rebecca and offers incantatory, noble-savage speeches when not casting spells inspired by her bloodthirsty personal deity, Lady Leopard. Merula is able to call down terrible storms from the indifferent heavens, and Rebecca herself manages to blow up a galleon, with the aid of Thomasina de Paris, a wonderfully clever dwarf—in fact, a court fool to Queen Elizabeth. Pursued by English fire-ships, the Armada is routed in shameful defeat. In an epilogue, Finney admits to making up some of the details, but who cares? This is fiction—and the gorgeous, carefully wrought prose carries all before it.
Ambitious, engrossing, full of melodramatic thunder.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-31285-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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