This novel intrigues and delights with an assured orchestration of historical research and imaginative flights.
Romance, mystery, history, and magical invention dance across centuries in an impressive debut novel.
Landragin layers historical fiction, metafiction, mystery, fantasy, myth, and romance in a way that might remind readers of such books as Cloud Atlas, Life After Life, The Time Traveler’s Wife—or even Dan Brown’s conspiracy-based adventures, albeit with more elegant prose. Its preface begins with a metafictional tease: “I didn’t write this book. I stole it.” The narrator sets forth the history of three manuscripts delivered to him for bookbinding by a wealthy client in contemporary Paris. Each novella has a different author/narrator, including two based on real people: There's a creepy story supposedly written by poet Charles Baudelaire, a World War II noir romance by critic/novelist Walter Benjamin, and a surrealistic memoir by someone described as “a kind of deathless enchantress.” The tales’ relation to one another, the preface narrator promises, will be revealed, whether we read the three in order or in the “Baroness sequence,” named for the manuscript’s ill-fated owner, which interlaces chapters from all three into one novel. “The Education of a Monster” is Baudelaire’s self-portrait of a colossally self-centered snob. His poetic reputation endures, however, in Benjamin's “City of Ghosts,” as the posh Baudelaire Society becomes the epicenter of a breathless mystery, playing out as the Nazis advance upon the city. “Tales of the Albatross” is the fantastic story that lies behind the other two, beginning with the arrival of the first Europeans on a remote island in Polynesia. Narrated by a young woman called Alula, its tragic love story is set in motion when a crossing, or rather two of them, occurs. Long practiced by the island’s people, the crossing is a spiritual exchange in which two carefully prepared individuals pass into each other’s bodies. But these crossings go terribly sideways, and Alula’s search for her beloved, Koahu, will take her through seven bodies and across two centuries, through the lives of a globe-circling sailor, a woman born enslaved on a Louisiana plantation, a terribly disfigured Belgian heiress, and a hypnotist-turned-psychologist, among others. In whatever order you read, Landragin carries off the whole handsomely written enterprise with panache.
This novel intrigues and delights with an assured orchestration of historical research and imaginative flights.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-25904-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
