A rare combination of literary finesse and quick-paced plot—and another triumph from the versatile Phillips.
The first novel in nine years from Phillips (The Tragedy of Arthur, 2011, etc.) is another bravura performance: a tale of espionage and theological intrigue set in Elizabethan England.
The book begins with a Turkish expedition in 1591 to England, "a far-off, sunless, primitive, sodden, heathen kingdom at the far cliffside edge of the civilized earth." One of the delegation's reluctant conscripts is Mahmoud Ezzedine, the sultan's personal physician, who leaves behind a comfortable life and a beloved wife and son. But at sojourn's end, Ezzedine—who's become friendly with a British physician/naturalist and familiar with British irony and raillery—makes a remark that, overheard, allows a conniving rival to trap him; if reported to the sultan, the jest would result in the doctor's execution. So Ezzedine is left in England as a "gift" to Elizabeth's court, and when he saves a nobleman who suffers a public seizure, he is passed along—regifted—to the epileptic. Ten years pass; Ezzedine, now "Matthew Thatcher," has adapted to his fate by converting to Christianity and by expunging—to the greatest extent possible—all memory of his homeland and former happiness. Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth is dying, heirless, and the leading candidate for the throne is King James VI of Scotland. But James' bona fides as a Protestant—his parents were Catholic, as is his wife, and rumors abound of his secret papism—are in doubt, which could reignite the long sectarian bloodbath recently ended. Who better to peel the theological onion that is James, thinks the cunning spymaster Geoffrey Belloc, than the only Muslim in the empire? And so Ezzedine/Thatcher is regifted again, this time to the Scottish king. Phillips' incorporation of history—including an entertaining side plot about Elizabethan theater—shows the sure hand and psychological acuity he is known for. One is reminded of Hilary Mantel's magisterial Wolf Hall but perhaps more pointedly of Graham Greene's novels, which also often center on theology and spycraft and often feature a protagonist exiled, like Ezzedine, to some seedy outpost of foreignness and amorality.
A rare combination of literary finesse and quick-paced plot—and another triumph from the versatile Phillips.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9548-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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