Entertaining enough when not stating the historically obvious.
Murder mystery meets historical enigma in pre–Nazi Era Berlin.
Franklin’s historical thriller flows from the crossover point between two populations in flux: the Germans of the Weimar Republic and a surge of Russian émigrés—rich whites, poor servants, scarred Jews—fleeing the Bolsheviks. Using extensive research, she evokes the hectic, Cabaret-esque mood of 1920s Berlin and the growing appeal to the Germans of Hitler’s brand of aggressive nationalism, in the wake of the hyper-inflation and shame arising from defeat in World War I. Two questions drive the plot: Could one of the Czar’s daughters have survived the massacre of the Russian royal family at Ekaterinburg? And who is the hulking murderer slaughtering women in the German capital? Prince Nick Potrovskov, a wheeler-dealer club owner and currency speculator, rescues a frightened, identity-less woman, who might be Anastasia, Princess of all the Russias, from the Berlin insane asylum and resettles her under the name Anna Anderson in an apartment with two companions, Nicky’s world-weary Jewish secretary Esther and an ex-Romanov servant-turned-stripper, Natalya. Anna is terrified of a man she claims is stalking her, maybe a Cheka Communist operative. When Esther is attacked, then Natalya killed, Police Inspector Schmidt takes up the case, simultaneously tracing the criminal to Hitler’s Brownshirts and falling in love with Esther. The irregularly shaped and paced story wraps up a decade later as Hitler comes to power. If Anna’s past and future circumstances remain hung about with question marks, Germany’s do not. Franklin, stirring a strange pot of romance, violence, sardonic humor and self-fulfilling prophecy, is most successful with scenes between her wise-cracking lovers. Anna and Esther have an audience with Adolf but the big finale is when the real Romanov steps forward.
Entertaining enough when not stating the historically obvious.Pub Date: May 2, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-081726-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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