Much to enjoy in this rural browse, though the land has been grazed before.
Fletcher debuts with the tale of a girl’s coming of age in Wales: as plentiful elements of richness and grace slowly give way to fairly standardized small-town gothic.
Evangeline Jones is only seven and living in Birmingham, England, when her pretty young mother dies suddenly, leaving the fatherless Evie orphaned. So it’s off to Wales with this alert and spunky little girl: she’s sent to the village of Cae Tresaint, or, more accurately, to the nearby farm of her maternal grandparents, where—from a viewpoint 21 years later, and expecting her first child—she will re-create for us the remarkable events of her first year on the farm, when she was eight. There will be the life of the farm itself—cattle, sheep, illness, changing weather, veterinary emergencies—to carry the story forward with much of genuine interest, but it’s the mystery of her own parentage—and of her own sexuality—that constitutes Evie’s deeper story. Bit by bit, she will piece together the mystery of her own father—who he was, where he came from, why he disappeared—and in so doing, will gradually learn more and more also about her mother, whose own childhood, and first love, also took place on this very farm. Traces of her absent mother are everywhere: she’s remembered by her own parents, of course, but remembered most fondly by the hired hand, Daniel (16 years older than Evie), by the strange but kind recluse, Billie Macklin, and even, though with ferocity rather than fondness, by the mean and crotchety shopkeeper, Mr. Phipps. Added to Evie’s absent parents is yet another absence—after, that is, the disappearance and presumed abduction of the pretty and flirtatious Rosie Hughes, an element in the plot serves only as adornment, not necessity, and that consequently does its large share in bringing on the element of melodrama as Evie faces trial both by fear and by fire.
Much to enjoy in this rural browse, though the land has been grazed before.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-393-05988-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
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
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
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