Recent Reviews
Time of the Child by Niall Williams
Tender and touching, Niall Williams’s Time of the Child is an inspired book for the holiday season. Like his extraordinary novel, This Is Happiness, this tale takes place in the fictitious village of Faha on the western coast of Ireland. Known for his gorgeous prose, Williams does not disappoint. He has written a heartwarming story about Faja’s transformation after an infant is left at the church.
Faha is a poor, rural and isolated community with an eclectic mix of personalities. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. The Catholic church is the beating heart of the village and the moral arbiter of human behavior. The story takes place during the Advent season of 1962. Jack Troy is a widower and village doctor. He lives with his spinster daughter Ronnie, who assists with his medical practice. When an abandoned baby is left in their care, their lives change dramatically. The intense love Jack and Ronnie feel for this infant them with a new sense of purpose. But they know that If the church authorities learn of the child, they will claim her. Jack and Ronnie wrestle with how to handle this situation with its moral and logistical complications.
William’s prose is dense and filled with profound insights into people’s limitations and strengths. Though the novel brims with the characters’ inner thoughts, I wish Williams had included more dialogue. Despite living in the same home, Jack Troy and his daughter Ronnie do not share their thoughts or feelings. It is as if there is a word limit in their home. And thus, they exist in the solitary musings of their own minds. But the miracle of this baby changes their dynamic for the better.
In these troubled times, reading about good but imperfect people is comforting. Williams has lifted up the lives of these villagers into a magical, almost mystical message about living and loving. Williams shows his readers the power of goodness and love in his beautiful novel Time of the Child. 4/5
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan
In 2019, Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan published their heartbreaking novel Mad Honey. My review will be short to avoid spoiling the plot. This story explores many social issues, including domestic abuse, trans relationships, injustice in the legal system, and suicide. And though these topics can seem overwhelming, the novel, at its core, is a tender coming-of-age story about two teenagers who fall in love. Picoult and Boylan’s thoughtful narrative offers insights, not judgment.
Olivia McAfee leaves her abusive marriage to a cardiac surgeon in Boston. She and her son Asher move to New Hampshire for a fresh start. Asher is a sophomore in high school who falls in love with Lily, the new girl in town. Lily and her mother, Ava, have also fled a toxic situation in California. Both Olivia and Ava are now single mothers wanting to protect their children from their painful pasts. Yet when Lily is found dead, Asher becomes the prime suspect. Despite their best efforts, the history and secrets of both families take center stage when Asher stands trial for Lily’s murder.
Writing a novel with another author must be complicated, and mostly Picoult and Boylan succeed. They have put their readers in the shoes of their characters and shared the character’s complex inner lives. And they have done so with compassion and understanding. Isn’t that one of the goals of a novel? Thanks to my DJKS book club for suggesting this book. 4/5
Finding Margaret Fuller by Alison Pataki
Allison Pataki’s powerful novel brings the brilliant feminist Margaret Fuller to life. Delving into the historical record, Pataki celebrates this intellectual heroine who changed 19th century American thinking only to fade into the shadows of history.
Born in 1810, Fuller was a talented journalist, writer, translator and teacher who advocated for women’s equality. Her demanding father was determined to provide her with the same education as a boy. He tutored her himself. Fuller spoke multiple languages and read Shakespeare, Virgil, and Goethe while she was young. By all accounts, her genius stunned all those whom she encountered. Later, she taught school in Boston and Providence and, in 1839, became the first woman editor of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist journal called The Dial. Later that year, Fuller became the editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, where she wrote opinion pieces and literary criticism.
She was a feminist before feminism entered the lexicon and forged a path for women’s suffrage before an organized movement emerged in the United States. Ignoring the restrictive roles dictated by men, she unapologetically advocated for women’s equality and became a model of an independent woman. She said, “We do a great disservice to all people, male and female when we relegate a lady’s talents only to the hearth and home.” In 1845, she published her groundbreaking book Woman in the Nineteenth Century, a feminist critique that bemoaned the injustices inflicted upon American women.
Pataki’s novel starts slow, but gains momentum after the first few chapters. Though Fuller’s articles and books dominated the bestseller lists in the 1840s, it is curious that her legacy has not endured like her friends Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louise May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Barret Browning, and Edgar Allen Poe, all of whom are characters in this novel.
This fact makes Allison Pataki’s novel even more important. Not only is it the first fictionalized account of Margaret Fuller’s life, but it is also an acknowledgement of her fierce advocacy for women’s equality, the end of slavery and prison reform. As Susan B. Anthony said, “Fuller possessed more influence on the thoughts of American women than any woman previous to her time.” If you haven’t read about Margaret Fuller, I recommend this novel.
Thanks to my sister-in-law Mary for giving me this book. 4/5
