Amazon.com Review
Although the premise of this dark, inventive novel is almost absurdly romantic--a brooding hero and a pink-haired heroine, both in mourning, are thrown together in a stark, windswept landscape that evokes the Yorkshire moors--Elizabeth Knox's astonishing gift for language and imagery lift
Billie's Kiss above others in its genre. It is 1903, and Murdo Hesketh (a fair-haired Heathcliff) is returning to his cousin's remote Scottish island estate, where he is engaged to implement the many "improvements" his wealthy cousin is foisting on the unwilling islanders. Just as his ship reaches harbor, Billie Paxton, a young female passenger, jumps onto land, avoiding by seconds the explosion that destroys the ship. Is she responsible for the destruction of the
Gustav Edda and the deaths of her sister Edith and just-born nephew, as well as of Hesketh's loyal servant and friend, Ian Betler? Knox's third novel takes a few pages to get going, and some will find its uneven pace disorienting. But it is hard to put down a book in which the heroine accidentally throws a bucket of bile at the hero, and in which some 20 people die within the first 130 pages. Eventful and lushly descriptive,
Billie's Kiss has the atmosphere of
Jane Eyre with the revisionist sensibility of
Wide Sargasso Sea.
--Regina Marler
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
New Zealander Knox (The Vintner's Luck; Black Oxen) cleverly explores the many meanings of the word "kiss" in this haunting romantic mystery set in 1903. Billie Paxton, an uneducated but perspicacious young woman, thinks the worst is over after a rough voyage on the Gustav Edda, a Swedish steamer that has taken her to the outer Scottish island of Kissack and Skilling, along with her pregnant sister, Edith, and her brother-in-law, Henry Maslen, a tutor who has accepted a position with the local squire, Lord Hallowhulme, at Kiss Castle. But just as the Gustav Edda is docking in port, an explosion shatters the hull, leaving Edith dead and Henry injured. An excellent swimmer, Billie immediately jumps off the stricken ship and scrambles to shore, witnessed by Lord Hallowhulme's cousin, Murdo Hesketh. One of the few other passengers to survive the catastrophe, Murdo wonders how Billie came to be so ready to leap off the doomed boat. On Kissack and Skilling, the intricately interwoven lives of a host of islanders, particularly the inhabitants of Kiss Castle, give Billie plenty to ponder. Meanwhile, Murdo pursues Billie as both suspect and object of desire. When Murdo claims it was "just a kiss" after finally succeeding in kissing the breathless Billie, it turns out to be much more than that. The novel's promotion invokes the names of Emily Bront‰ and Jane Austen; aficionados of those classic authors shouldn't get their hopes too high, but many romance fiction fans should be well satisfied.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
