Dorris and Erdrich's highly publicized collaboration (serial rights
to Mother Jones, Caliban, and Redbook; film rights to Michelle
Pfeiffer) is part academic slice-of-life, part love story, and part
melodrama, tied together by a diary and Native Americanisms. The
first half is loose-jointed, if endearing, while the windup, set in
the Caribbean, is interesting for its ideas about Columbus and its
mystical lyricism but contrived and awkward in its plotting. The
novel centers on a "lost diary" of Columbus, which comes into the
hands of Vivian Twostar ("I belong to the lost tribe of mixed
bloods. . ."), a divorced, pregnant, and up-for-tenure
anthropologist in Native American Studies at Dartmouth. Vivian has
a fierce grandmother, a teen-age son (Nash), and a stodgy lover,
Roger Williams - a "Well-known narrative poet, critics' darling,
Byronic media star" who is trying to write a poetic version of
Columbus's journal. Twostar, who "had been asked - no, ordered - to
submit a professional article on Mr. Navigator," searches through
the library stacks (she's both repelled by and drawn to Columbus),
brings her child (Violet) to term, pursues her affair with Williams
(Violet's father, a man also addicted to National Public Radio),
and keeps tabs on her son, Nash. After finding the diary, Vivian
contacts Henry Cobb ("a scion of capitalism gone rotten"), who
invites her (Roger and Violet tag along) to his estate in the
Bahamas so that he can try to wrest from her the location of
Columbus's crown, purportedly "the greatest treasure of Europe."
When Cobb finally gets nasty, Twostar dispenses with him via karate
chops, while Williams and Violet nearly drown. After Williams,
revitalized, shares an excerpt from his poem-in-progress, Twostar
finds the "crown" - which, predictably, is symbolic, made of
thorns. The story itself here and its effortful deeper meanings
never quite find a way of meshing naturally, and, as in Alice
Walker's The Temple of my Familiar, New Age-isms win out over greed
and history. (Kirkus Reviews)
A novel from Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, winner of America's
prestigious National Book Award for Fiction, 2012. Charlie
Trumper's earliest memory is of hearing his grandfather's sales
patter from behind his costermonger's barrow. When Grandpa Charlie
dies, young Charlie wants nothing more than to follow in his
footsteps - his burning ambition is to own a shop that will sell
everything: 'The Biggest Barrow in the World'. Charlie's progress
from the teeming streets of Whitechapel to the elegance of Chelsea
Terrace is only a few miles 'as the crow flies'. But in Jeffrey
Archer's expert hands it becomes an epic journey through the
triumphs and disasters of the century, as Charlie follows a thread
of love, ambition and revenge to fulfil the dream his grandfather
inspired.
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