All that is known of the historical Desiree is that she was a bystander—unfortunately, she remains so here.
The rise of Napoleon as narrated by his first fiancee.
The Clary sisters, Desiree and Julie, daughters of a recently deceased Marseille merchant, are trying to rescue their brother from revolutionary prison when they encounter Joseph di Buonaparte. Entranced by Desiree’s beauty, Joseph uses his influence on the Clarys’ behalf. Joseph attempts to court Desiree, but he’s edged aside by Napoleon, who pledges marriage after toying with her affections. But as military ambitions increasingly preoccupy Napoleon, Desiree is supplanted by Josephine. Reluctantly, Desiree joins her sister, newly married to Joseph, in Paris. Not overjoyed that her jilter is now an in-law, she is too much the lady to show resentment, which may have served the historical Desiree but not so much the fictional character. When, early in the novel, she is admitted to Napoleon’s inner circle, Desiree ceases to be a protagonist and becomes a passive, if acute, observer. Her proximity to the Little Corporal has some benefits—her marriage to Bernadotte, Bonaparte’s most trusted general, brings not only love, but riches. Although the politics and contradictions of Napoleon’s success, as seen through Desiree’s eyes, are riveting, this is well-traveled ground. Desiree’s point of view is too nonjudgmental to bring to the fore the ironies attendant on the trajectory of an impoverished Corsican who uses the revolution as a platform to exceed the excesses of the deposed and beheaded Bourbons. Likewise, the struggles of Josephine, who captivates Napoleon in part due to her age and experience and then displeases him for the same reasons, are related by Desiree with no particular insights to distinguish this treatment from the many more direct portrayals of the empress. Pataki’s ability to flesh out imperial grandeur and foibles with telling detail, on full display in her Habsburg novels (Sisi, 2016, etc.), is equally evident here; however the dramatic demands of a novel are not met.
All that is known of the historical Desiree is that she was a bystander—unfortunately, she remains so here.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-12818-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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