Ross Poldark. (Poldark #1) Winston Graham. 1945/2015. Sourcebooks. 400 pages. [Source: Review copy]
It was windy. The pale afternoon sky was shredded with clouds; the road, grown dustier and more uneven in the past hour, was scattered with blown and rustling leaves.The novel opens* with the book's hero, Ross Poldark, returning to Cornwall in the fall of 1783. He's returning from war, learning that his father is dead--and that his father hasn't left him much money to work his estate (Nampara) with--also that the woman he thought was his one true love is engaged to another man--Ross' cousin, Francis. But Ross Poldark is resilient--stubborn--someone who knows what he wants and has the gumption to fight for what he wants. Mainly, he will not give up on his home and his mine to try to find a life elsewhere. He may be tempted to want to "fight for" Elizabeth. But mainly the battle is internal: more of a fighting to get her out of his mind and heart.
Is the novel a romance? Yes and no. Yes. Ross Poldark thinks he's madly in love with Elizabeth. And yes, the novel does chronicle his romance with Demelza towards the end. But in many ways, it is not a romance novel. Readers meet dozens of characters from all social classes, and, we follow their stories. For example, the dramatic relationship of Jinny and Jim Carter or Verity and Captain Blamey. Readers spend a lot of time with the lower classes, seeing the effects of poverty up close. And there is a sense of injustice at times at how they're treated and the very lack of opportunities that keep them trapped right where they are. At times--in certain situations--Ross is understanding and becomes something of their champion. (Not that this becomes his full-time job, righting the wrongs, fighting injustice, giving voice to those without. It doesn't. But he is a hard worker; he does dirty his own hands and work alongside others.) The more he "becomes one of them" the less his own class wants to do with him--or so it seems. There are always exceptions!
Ross can be impulsive in his wanting to do the right thing. For example, when he brings home a thirteen-year-old Demelza to be his servant. Does the girl desperately want to escape her own miserable home life where she's often beaten? Yes. Very much. Once Ross sees the scars on her back and learns her story, he wants to protect her. So he offers a job. But how will everyone else respond? Will her father let her go without a fight? without trouble? Not likely! And what will his own class think of this decision? They find it strange and unusual!
Readers get to spend a lot of time with Demelza, Jud, and Prudie. (And I was pleasantly surprised to find that Prudie and Jud actually like Demelza in the book and aren't trying to rid themselves of her every five minutes.)
(The novel closes in December of 1787).
Do I have favorite characters? Yes. I really LOVE Verity. And, of course, Ross and Demelza come to mind as well. If I didn't care about them, then I couldn't like the book overall. And I definitely liked it. I loved, loved, loved some scenes of this one. I didn't love every single scene, every single chapter equally. But there were places I just adored this story.
*The first chapter opens with Ross Poldark returning. Technically, the book has a prologue which introduces readers to Joshua Poldark, Ross' father, who is dying.
© 2015 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
World War Two was the most devastating conflict in recorded human history. It was both global in extent and total in character. It has understandably left a long and dark shadow across the decades. Yet it is three generations since hostilities formally ended in 1945 and the conflict is now a lived memory for only a few. And this growing distance in time has allowed historians to think differently about how to describe it, how to explain its course, and what subjects to focus on when considering the wartime experience.
The post The long history of World War II appeared first on OUPblog.
Kinfolk. Pearl S. Buck. 1945/2004. Moyer Bell. 408 pages.
The theater in Chinatown was crowded to the doors. Every night actors brought from Canton played and sang the old Chinese operas. If Billy Pan, the manager, announced a deficit at the end of the lunar year, businessmen contributed money to cover it. The theater was a bulwark of home for them. Their children went to American schools, spoke the American language, acted like American children. The fathers and mothers were not highly educated people and they could not express to the children what China was, except that it was their own country, which must not be forgotten. But in the theater the children could see for themselves what China was. Here history was played again and ancient heroes came to life before their eyes. It was the only place in Chinatown which could compete with the movies. Parents brought their children early and stayed late. They talked with friends and neighbors, exchanged sweetmeats and gossip, and sat spellbound and dreaming when the curtain went up to show the figures who were contemporary with their ancestors.As much as I just loved and adored
East Wind: West Wind--my very first Pearl S. Buck novel--I just LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Kinfolk. It is so very different from
The Good Earth and
Sons. While I struggled to find anyone sympathetic in The Good Earth and Sons, I could name half a dozen characters (if not more) that I liked, loved, respected, or admired in Kinfolk. And here's the thing, even the characters that I didn't necessarily "like", I found them to be well-developed, complex. Unlike the often nameless one-dimensional characters in The Good Earth and Sons. And the language, the style. It wowed me. It really did! So much to love and appreciate.
Kinfolk is about the Liang family. Dr. Liang, the father, is a scholar who fled China because it was getting to be too harsh, too ugly, too dangerous, too uncertain. He's a scholar, a teacher, a thinker, a philosopher. He needs peace and quiet and rest. He needs to be surrounded by people who appreciate his intellect, his superiority. (And does he ever think he's superior to just about anyone who's ever lived.) His wife, well, she "appreciates" him as best she can. Knowing that he can be oh-so-difficult to live with. But knowing that it is her place to bring out the best in him. To calm him when he gets furious or frustrated. But this isn't always easy since he doesn't respect her or see her as someone worthy of love and respect. She's the mother of his children. But. That's about it. He doesn't feel like she's intellectually or emotionally his soul mate. And he doesn't see any need to treat her as if she was the love of his life. It's her job to appreciate him, not the other way round.
So the Liangs have four children--two of the children were born in China, two of the children were born in America--James and Mary are the oldest, Peter and Louise are the youngest. James and Mary have a deep longing to return to China, to make their home, their future in China. They know it won't be easy. They know it will require sacrifice and hard work. But neither James or Mary would want to live anywhere else. They wouldn't trade the hardships, the uncertainties for anything because they feel
Cannery Row. John Steinbeck. 1945. Penguin. 208 pages.
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.
I enjoyed this John Steinbeck novel. Steinbeck certainly has a way with words, details, and images. Even if what he is describing is more ugly than beautiful. He has a way of saying it so that it matters. So that you, the reader, care. It does help that this one has a good deal of humor. Not that humor is quite the way I'd put it. (Since early on, we see a suicide or two. But still. It's Steinbeck.)
Lee Chong's grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply. It was small and crowded but within its single room a man could find everything he needed or wanted to live and to be happy--clothes, food, both fresh and canned, liquor, tobacco, fishing equipment, machinery, boats, cordage, caps, pork chops. You could buy at Lee Chong's a pair of slippers, a silk kimono, a quarter pint of whiskey and a cigar. You could work out combinations to fit almost any mood. The one commodity Lee Chong did not keep could be had across the lot at Dora's.
What is Cannery Row about? It's about a surprise party gone wrong. And the men (and women) who come together to make everything right again in the end. Mack and a few of his friends want to do something nice for Doc, one of the town's favorite guys. They think the best way to say that they appreciate him is by throwing him a surprise party. But since they're always down on their luck (in other words low on cash, and not trustworthy enough to extend credit to) they're a bit stumped as to how to go about it. What plan will they come up with?
© Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
Glad you wrote this review beucause I would have never read anything more from Pearl Buck.
Laura, that's what I was hoping to show! That Pearl S. Buck wrote more than just the one book. And I am so VERY VERY glad that I didn't read The Good Earth first or I never would have picked up another of her books--most likely.