Intricate plotting, well-staged scenes and colorful descriptions enhance head-spinning but lively entertainment.
A debut historical novel peopled by Dante and other Italian Renaissance figures, along with reimagined Montagues and Capulets.
In September 1314, Padua is at war with Verona, which is flourishing under the rule of wily Francesco “Cangrande” della Scala. Although Cangrande is technically the overlord of several cities including Padua, the latter seeks to regain control of Vicenza, now governed by Cangrande’s brother-in-law and thus allied with Verona. To achieve their aims, the Paduan lord Giacomo “Il Grande” da Carrara and his nephew Marsilio join forces with Count Vinciguerra of San Bonifacio, a nobleman banished from Verona and enemy of Cangrande’s family. As the Carraras and the Count attack a Veronese suburb, Cangrande hosts a wedding party for his nephew and welcomes exiled Florentine poet Dante Alaghieri [sic] and his two sons. Elder son Pietro, the novel’s de facto protagonist, gets swept up in Cangrande’s subsequent routing of Padua. Warming to the excitement of battle, as well as the companionship of young aristocrat Romeo Mariotto Montecchio and newly titled Antonio “Antony” Capecelatro, Pietro saves Cangrande’s life and captures Marsilio. Pietro is knighted for his bravery, but he also sustains an injury and observes tensions brewing between his friends over Marsilio’s cousin Gianozza. Betrothed to Antony but enamored of Mariotto, Gianozza reignites the feud between the Montecchi and the Capelletti. (Shakespeare anglicized both families’ names for Romeo and Juliet.) After Mariotto and Gianozza elope, a duel between unexpected principals erupts and Pietro must depart Verona, leaving his newly arrived sister Antonia in charge of their father as he pens Purgatorio. Pietro has been enlisted to find the man who repeatedly attempts to abduct little Cesco, Cangrande’s illegitimate son. Since Cesco is believed to be the fabled savior of Italy, much depends on Pietro when the kidnapper succeeds at last, but the machinations of court may be harder to stomach than anything conceived by adversaries.
Intricate plotting, well-staged scenes and colorful descriptions enhance head-spinning but lively entertainment.Pub Date: July 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-312-36144-0
Page Count: 608
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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