From Library Journal
This is a bit of a departure for Hawkes (e.g., Blood Oranges, 1972): a wry coming-of-age novel told from the vantage point of a 13-year-old foundling girl. When the orphans of Saint Martha's are taken to visit Saint Clement's Home for Old Soldiers, narrator Dervla finds herself paired with cantankerous World War I vet Corporal Stack. Soon in love?and this unconventional love story rings true?they "escape," only to find themselves, because of an injury to the corporal, more or less imprisoned in the ruined "Great Manor," populated by the Young Mistress; her obese, drunken brother; and a grim cast of servants. Funny (Dervla's fictional accounts of her adventures to her Foundling Mother are hilarious), fabulous (in the true sense of the word), with a sensuality not always suppressed and suspense to boot, this is great reading from a major author, showing strangely that you really can go home again. Highly recommended for all collections.?Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The long-prolific Hawkes (The Cannibal, 1950, etc., etc., etc.) last offered the tale of a French boy who (The Frog, 1996) swallowed a frog; this time, in a perfect brogue from first to last, an orphaned Irish girl tells how she becomes--but better hush there, since hers is a story that comes down to a single surprise at end. Thistle, however--real name Dervla O'Shannon--was left in a basket at the door of Saint Martha's home for foundlings, a great old pile of stone where, along with 30 or so others, she's raised (in maybe the best brief part of this brief little book) to the edge of puberty--around which time, on a group outing to Saint Clement's home for old soldiers, she meets a WW I veteran and ex-corporal named Teddy Stack (he's wearing his gas mask when Dervla first sets eyes on him), with whom--believe it or not--she falls madly in love. A symbolic embrace of history? A Joycean comment on the fate of Ireland? Whatever, much is in store for our Dervla--especially after Teddy gets kicked by the hoof of a jumping horse in a passing fox hunt, an injury that not only puts him into an amnesiac coma but also into the position (don't ask how) of the aged master of a grand, old, falling-down, gorgeously described manor house--the same half-abandoned house where Dervla (please, no questions) becomes first a scullery maid and then (disastrously) serving maid (she drops a whole roasted pig on the floor) before falling deathly ill, recovering in time to witness a second hunt, see a horse fall disastrously--and hear Teddy, its rider, suddenly knocked amnesia-free, re-declare his love to our Dervla before--but there's an end to it, for now. A bauble, really, and yet nevertheless--told in one long fine poetic unbroken Irish sigh-- the bauble of a master indeed. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
About the Author
John Hawkes is T. B. Stowell University Professor Emeritus, Brown University.
