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HomeShop at BookSurgeLiterary CriticismGeneralBeautiful Dreamer |
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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 38 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Beautifully dreamed Jan 16, 2008
By W. M. Shaffer
"History Man"
As historical novels go, Joan Naper's ranks among the most intriguing and compelling for three reasons:
1. Thorough-going research of a fascinating period in the history of the growth of Chicago. Ms. Naper is able to personalize and humanize what could have been a pedestrian version of Irish immigrant life
2. Strong narrative style through seemingly casual conversation. Dialogoe is always difficult, always prone to lapses of sermonizing. Ms. Naper avoids that with short, compact, true-to-life conversation. The result is a fast pace full of meaning and insight.
3. Realism without sentimentalism. The narrative is bright, engaging and creative as it avoids the hard-edged or the biting judgmentalism found in so many stories about heroic family struggles in difficult circumstances. Instead of smacking her reader between the eyes with a meat-axe, Ms. Naper lays out a human environment of very real people doing the ordinary things of life with extraordinary attention to detail.
One can virtually smell the smells and see the surroundings in this period piece with a purpose.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
The Lure of the Irish Jan 17, 2008
By J. McGivern
From the onset of that magical Christmas morning to the work and camaraderie of a holiday family dinner, Joan Naper has reached out and invited the reader to stay awhile and get to know the Coakley family. And getting to know Kitty's family was as easy and gentle as the snow falling outside her frosted window.
As we find ourselves wanting to know more about the conflicts and emotions of what, at first, appears to be this large, traditional Irish family, we are left suspecting that perhaps that is just an anomaly.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
A New Dickens Jan 28, 2008
By Mary F. Golden
The excerpt makes me want to read more, and what better praise can be given? I already care about these characters. Ms. Naper not only has a gift for presenting character succinctly and thoroughly, she also writes beautiful descriptive prose. Her opening paragraph captures immediate interest, and provides such a pretty picture.( As for the complaint of "Why does it start in the kitchen? Kitchens are boring", any reader, or liver of life, for that matter, worth his or her salt knows that people spend more time in the kitchen than any other room in the house.) Her reaearch into the details of daily living for a lower middle class immigrant family at the turn of the century is meticulous - though I am Irish, I've never heard of "colcannon" nor the ritual surrounding it, but it intrigues me - and pays off in piqueing the reader's interest. I am much taken with Ms. Naper's way of providing hoardes of information in a deceptively slight turn of phrase. For instance, she describes Kitty's watching her mother dish out the colcannon, wondering if she is going to get the dreaded thimble, "but [she] could see no indicator either in the lumps of potatoes or in her mother's eyes of what was hidden inside." A clever double meaning, that.
Her attention to detail, her fully-developed characterizations, and her setting put one in mind of the richly-worded novels of Charles Dickens. All in all, I think we should keep an eye on Ms. Naper. She is most accomplished.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
History and Heart masterfully woven for a compelling story Jan 17, 2008
By Margaret Moira O'Brien
Since I loved Devil in the White City, I was anxious to learn more about the years after those events. Joan Naper's novel creatively combines the lives of the "wild pigs-in-the-parlor" Coakley family while giving us interesting bits of Chicago history like the origin of the Monodanack building's name. I was immediately drawn in and am anxious for more. She portrays a loving family that also has members (familiar to many of us --Irish or 19th century or we moderns) like the sister who gives "a compliment rapped in a dig" and a father who rousts his sons by demanding they get their "sorry carcasses" out of bed on Christmas morning. Naper's use of language, love of Chicago history and adept ability to develop characters quickly and precisely make these few pages enticing. I'll dig out my recipe for colcannon as I await the rest of this most engaging first novel
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Dreams of the Future Jan 27, 2008
By M. Laue
Chicago Irish-Catholic historical fiction, a female coming of age in a new century in a dynamic city and a first generation immigrant family in a country that is ambivalent about them--in a beginning chapter Ms Naper's writing evokes many emotions in this reader that make me want to continue the rest of the book to discover how these themes will be developed and what happens to the intrepid heroine. Although it is difficult to introduce such a large case of characters in the opening chapter, I think that Ms Naper presents them very well through normal, and often irritating, family interactions and lively dialogue. I was very immersed in the story from the beginning and am anxious to continue reading.
See all 38 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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