8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a ripping good yarn!, March 7, 2002
This review is from: Henderson's Spear: A Novel (Hardcover)
A Canadian filmaker writes from a Tahitian jail to her unknown daughter she gave up at birth, of her troubled past & her family's buried history. In the search for her father, a pilot missing since the Korean War, Liv travels to Polynesia his last known whereabouts, & winds up behind bars on a trumped-up murder charge.
It is that long-forgotten child's note, received while in jail, that brings up Liv's childhood memories. HENDERSON'S SPEAR is a love letter from a woman who never thought of herself as a mother, to her now 20 year old daughter.
Ronald Wright tells of the history of the end of the Korean War & the French & American atomic bomb testing on the atolls of that vast ocean. He keenly describes the affects of the fallout, the use of pilots to photograph the explosions, & the islanders' memories of being guinea pigs; uncovering an era we would all rather forget - what hell we brought to paradise!...
This novel is like a treasure chest found on a desert island, in which you will uncover all sorts of histories; Herman Melville's meanderings before he wrote MOBY DICK; South Sea Island cultures - past & present; how Darwin's theory of evolution affected his contemporaries; how Queen Victoria's grandsons were groomed for public life; how one man's memories of a life in the service of his country affects another's two generations later & so much more!
Normally such yarns have a male protagonist & this one is refreshing & unusual as the Reader listens to what a woman has to say about the affairs of the heart & our ancestors. Ronald Wright has woven out of the threads of history, a compelling story of the ghosts people carry with them. HENDERSON'S SPEAR is a tapestry of depth & intrigue, affection & redemption.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining., February 25, 2002
This review is from: Henderson's Spear: A Novel (Hardcover)
In this consummately romantic double narrative, the reader discovers in the first hundred words (!) that the speaker is Olivia Wyvern, a 38-year-old woman falsely accused of murder and in prison in Arue, "on the far side of the world," that she has been contacted by the child she gave up for adoption when she was sixteen, and that she is writing a letter to this child.
Within the first ten pages, Wright efficiently involves the reader in further details of Olivia's life, as she muses over the death of her mother "over a parrot" and reminisces about the old house in which the family has lived for 200 years, a house loaded with documents, letters, and artifacts, including a strange, 14' long ebony spear, supposedly an assegai from Africa. We find out that Olivia's mother was disowned, that she never revealed information about her family background, and that Olivia's father was declared missing in Korea. In a locked box Olivia has found five notebooks written by Frank Henderson, a former owner of the house, an adventurer who traveled around the world for three years in the late 1800's with Crown Prince Eddy and Prince George.
As Olivia Wyvern, through her letter to her daughter, and Frank Henderson, through his newly discovered journals, tell their stories in alternate chapters, the reader learns how Olivia, a film maker, came to be imprisoned in Tahiti and of her search for her father and her family history. We learn about Henderson's travels with the teenage princes through Africa in the 1880's, their search for identity, their sexual curiosity, and their mysterious three-week stop in Tahiti.
Wright pulls out all the stops in this novel, using every romantic element imaginable to pique the reader's curiosity and involve his/her emotions. He also includes, however, historical background which gives this novel more depth than some other romances. In Olivia's story, the aftereffects of French colonialism in the Pacific, along with France's A-bomb tests in Polynesia, are included, and Lars Lindquist, an adventurer who sailed on the Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl, is a character. Melville's novel Typee, set in Tahiti, is discussed at some length. In the Henderson story, discussions of Darwin, native opposition to French colonialism, the "secret" story of Prince Eddy, and traditional customs of the local Polynesians are included. With good description and unique imagery, this entertaining, plot-driven novel offers several hours of total escape for those seeking it. Mary Whipple
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4.0 out of 5 stars
Looking forward to the sequel ..., December 13, 2007
As in his first novel, A Scientific Romance, Wright puts a lot of effort into structure: here he deftly melds the memoirs of a nineteenth-century servant of the British raj with a modern-day expedition to French Pacific territory, and he throws in some anti-nuclear-testing politics, a mystery or two, and an uncertain relationship between mother and abandoned child as well. None of it is forced and I enjoyed just about every moment of it. This is serious writing and serious intent. Again (I complained about the same thing in the previous book) the ending didn't work for me; I suppose I was looking for resolution, and perhaps one can't or shouldn't always expect that. An entertaining yarn without being in any way escapist or trivial. When does Amazon.com get Wright's next novel in stock?
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
