Sexy Indian maidens, brooding Spaniards—more History Lite from the author of When We Were Gods (not reviewed).
The Conquistadors take a licking but keep on ticking.
Of course, that’s thanks to the intervention of the female slave Malinali, whose father prophesied the eventual downfall of the mighty lord of the Mexican people (Motecuhzoma’s personal representatives slaughtered the old man, and her jealous mother immediately sold Malinali into slavery). Her father always told Malinali that her destiny was disaster, that she is the drum who beats the sunset for Motecuhzoma, and that her future is with the gods—in particular with Feathered Serpent, who is expected to return any day now. Happily, Cortes more or less matches Feathered Serpent’s description, and Malinali is eager to interpret for the being she reveres as a god, though the hairy barbarians with him give her pause. Just for the hell of it, she puts a spin of her own on the words of both sides as she plots her revenge. The handsome Spaniard has a feeling she’s up to something, but her fathomless black eyes aren’t giving away any secrets. Cortes, no fool, assigns her and her girlfriends to deserving officers for some sensual R&R while he figures out what to do next. Chiefs and priests throw themselves at his feet, offering priceless gifts to appease the returned immortals, though some of the sneakier tribespeople observe that the supposed gods defecate in the woods just like mortal men. Cortes cares not a fig for the fine-feathered capes or bolts of cotton cloth, but the gold figurines get him excited indeed. Off to Tenochtitlan he goes to investigate the possibilities of plunder and terrorize the natives, and Malinali comes along to interpret some more and explain colorful local customs like tearing out people’s hearts and eating maggots. The sanctimonious Conquistadors are properly appalled and promptly run amok in various battles, eventually claiming the benighted land for Charles V and Christianity.
Sexy Indian maidens, brooding Spaniards—more History Lite from the author of When We Were Gods (not reviewed).Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-609-61029-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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