An all-around fun read about a king and a cad.
Weir regales readers with the life of England’s King Henry VIII.
What a life to be king, answerable only to God! Full of hormones and high privilege, Prince Henry, barely into his teens, can hardly wait to feel the weight of the crown on his brow and to marry his late brother’s wife, Katherine of Aragon. But the “Church, for some unfathomable reason, had decreed that boys could not bed their wives until they were fourteen.” Such backward thinking. Finally, in 1509, the 17-year-old ascends to the throne and marries Katherine, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, so they can produce an heir. It’s a wonderful life at first. “He was doing his husbandly duty—and pleasure—nightly now, and soon, surely, Kate would be with child.” That turns out to be a sticky point, as Kate bears him eight children but no surviving son—her fault, of course. Then after 18 years, he ditches Kate for a series of other women such as Anne Boleyn. He is obsessed with siring a future king, believing it against the natural order of the world for a woman to rule (inferior beings, don't have the wits, etc.). There is much more of course, like his wish for a joint English-Spanish conquest of France. But there is a bigger issue with consequences through the centuries. England is a Catholic country in Henry’s day, and his insistence on annulling his marriage to Kate goes down poorly with the pope. That personal issue, as the world knows, leads to the establishment of the Church of England. Meanwhile, Henry (or Harry, as he is sometimes called) takes great pleasure in his adulterous dalliances, in eating and jousting, and in his exercise of power. And don't even think of defying him or plotting against him because you will die. Even predicting the king's death is deemed treason. Weir takes the abundant history and weaves imagined conversations and motivations into a delightful yarn. It's so much better to read about Henry VIII now than to have lived back then.
An all-around fun read about a king and a cad.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9780593355060
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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