An intricate tour de force that conjures a new vision of the Bard’s early days.
A fictional imagining of William Shakespeare’s lost years, complete with espionage, barbed wit, and an unexpected relationship with Christopher Marlowe.
Novelist and playwright Blixt turns his attention to an extravagant and bawdy tale of the future Bard of Avon’s young misadventures before taking to quill and ink. The story begins with a teacher by the name of William Falstaff—actually Shakespeare, under an assumed name—who finds himself aiding and abetting the small-town antics of an alluring stranger named Kit, who’s none other than Christopher Marlowe, and their escapades grow to encompass foiling a plot against the life and throne of Queen Elizabeth. Drawing upon meticulously executed and seamlessly laid out historical research, Blixt gives shape to the Babington Plot of 1586, complete with all the expected real-life figures and a few of the author’s own creation. Surrounded by secrecy, betrayal, and political intrigue, the duo maintains a sense of levity and rakish delight in their undertakings, further buoyed by the budding romantic relationship that the author insinuates between them. Blixt deepens this latter plotline perhaps too soon, and he seems to lose its thread among the many convoluted turnings of the main story—sacrificing a closer character and relationship study for the sake of suspense and thrills. Will and Kit together traverse reputedly unsavory aspects of London society, finding in them much more humanity and grace than they expected; they navigate, also, the acuity of the group of 16th-century playwrights and writers called the Wits, of which Kit is a member along with John Lyly, Robert Greene, George Peele, and others. Breaking up all the insult-hurling, cipher-breaking, and law-evading are impassioned and eloquent discussions of the English canon, the future of the theater, and other intriguing questions. Overall, it makes for a delightful tour of British literary history, and Shakespeare lovers will delight in this imaginative and immersive work.
An intricate tour de force that conjures a new vision of the Bard’s early days.Pub Date: July 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-4-86751-441-2
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Next Chapter
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family.
“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.” We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive—“too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself”—Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions.
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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