At every turn, this story square-dances with cliché, and at every turn it’s thrilling. Jiles, a poet as well as a novelist, has recognized that the best stories are the known ones, as long as they’re told entrancingly and grow ever stranger as they roll on through familiar territory. Mostly she manages this small miracle by keeping her story quietly ironic and exquisitely particular ... this exhilarating novel travels through its marvelous terrain so quickly that one is shocked, almost stricken, to reach the end. So do what I did: Read it again.
...[a] remarkably vivid and compelling adventure novel ... While Jiles is unafraid of sentiment, her ability to keep the plot tense and the dialogue understated creates a delicious tale of constant surprises ... Jiles’ prose sparkles. It is at the same time lush and direct ... Mysterious and masterful, “News of the World” delivers the same sense of exotic wonder to us that the Captain’s articles bring to the frontier Texans.
...stories are empty without heart and soul, and Jiles gives us plenty of both as she renders the pain of loss and the power of words for an old man and a young girl who don’t really belong anywhere anymore ... Jiles grounds her characters’ metaphysical musings in a starkly realistic portrait of the lawless Texas landscape ... Even staunch pacifists may find it hard to resist being thrilled by Jiles’s intoxicating, blow-by-blow account of the way this unlikely pair, outmanned and outgunned, outwit and wreak bloody vengeance on their opponents ... Her lovely and tender novel affirms that the news of the world can be good, if we strive together to make it so.
...a joy to read: haunting, transporting and full of historical grit ... Just as readers who completed the book Lonesome Dove started up the trail again with Gus and Call, the author's strong, atmospheric writing invites a return to this period when Texans were not allowed to carry handguns outside the home and the characters, even Kidd's horses Fancy and Pasha, seem like living presences ... [a] poignant, affecting and humorous journey.
Like [Ron] Rash, Ms. Jiles writes books that bring the natural world to life and are also agonizingly eventful ... They will learn to trust each other, though not in a hokey way; Ms. Jiles is much too good to let her book sink into sentimentality ... a narrow but exquisite book about the joys of freedom; the discovery of unexpected, proprietary love between two people who have never experienced anything like it; pure adventure in the wilds of an untamed Texas; and the reconciling of vastly different cultures. That’s a lot to pack into a short (213 pages), vigorous volume, but Ms. Jiles is capable of saying a lot in few words.
The bond that forms between the captain and his charge is deep and deeply affecting. Jiles’ descriptive powers are as mighty as the land she paints. The author is an accomplished poet, as her lyrical language attests on every page ... Historical novels often bury the reader in an avalanche of research that fails to move the story forward. Here, the details are rich and telling ... The only serious criticism of this lovely book is that the last chapter shifts into a rushed, let’s-get this-over-with narrative summary in which much of the action is happening somewhere offstage. The beauty of this novel, and much of its emotional power, comes from the writer’s masterful ability to build absorbing, dramatic scenes.
A thrilling shootout with a pack of such outlaws—the scene occasions Ms. Jiles’s best writing—seals the bond between Kidd and Johanna. But what stands out amid the gun smoke and the period detail is the moving friendship between a girl with no place to fit in and an old man who has outlived his usefulness. Add them to the list of the Wild West’s great odd couples.
