An 832-page reconstruction of the life-and-times of the historical Macbeth, not Shakespeare's—and, though Dunnett's scholarly epic is rich in detail, irony, and elegant prose, most readers will find themselves yearning for the dramatic shaping and darkly vibrant characterization (not to mention the awesome concision!) of the Bard. As in other 11th-century historical novels, we quickly learn here that the authentic Macbeth tale has virtually nothing in common with the familiar one. "Macbeth" is actually the rarely used baptismal name of pagan-ish Thorfinn, a gawky teenage Earl of Orkney who is a grandson of King Malcolm of Alba (most of Scotland) and half-brother to Malcolm's heir Duncan. Tutored by foster-father Thorkel (the nomenclature throughout is dense and daunting), the lad grows up in the thick of Orkney/ Norway/Alba politics; he defects from the Norway camp, allying with Danish/English King Canute, thus gaining control of all the Orkneys; he expands his domain when Thorkel dispatches assorted enemies for him. (Thorfinn himself is a basically decent, mild-tempered chap, often speaking in the cadences of Ronald Colman.) And these early battles also bring a bride: Groa, gorgeous young widow of the slain Gillcomghain—who comments somewhat acerbically on Thorfinn's for-breeding-only conjugal visitations: "Four minutes. That was four minutes this time." Eventually, however, ugly but beautiful-voiced Thorfinn will come to love Groa (utterly unlike Shakespeare's Lady M. except for her verbal sharpness) deeply. Eventually, too, he'll become King of Alba—reluctantly: it's new King Duncan who's the invading aggressor; and, after losing in battle, Duncan is fatally wounded in a fair duel with Thorfinn (who tries not to kill his half-brother). The last two-thirds of the novel, then, deals with Thorfinn's career as a basically good king: a long, violent, sexually tinged feud with Norway-connected nephew Rognvald (duels, chases, burnings, sea battles); the building-up of Scotia's alliances and naval power; an extended diplomatic trip through Europe; and then the increasing troubles as 1066 approaches—from fleet-wrecking storms, from Siward of Northumbria in the south, from nephew Malcolm (whom Thorfinn always treated so nicely). There are battles, betrayals (by Denmark and Normandy), retreats, semi-retirement—and, finally, a dignified surrender via suicidal duel. Dunnett, author of several mysteries and the Francis of Lymond series, studs this knotty political pageant with tart dialogue, aphorisms, and tender husband/wife moments. Her scene-by-scene craftsmanship cannot be faulted. Yet neither Thorfinn/Macbeth nor Groa is a fully developed (or especially interesting) character here; the true-to-history plotting lacks momentum; and while pre-1066 buffs will certainly enjoy Dunnett's stylishly fictionalized scholarship, more of the historical-novel audience will prefer less authentic entertainments—like Farrington's The Breath of Kings (below), which covers precisely the same period, Lady Godiva and all.
Pub Date: May 18, 1982
ISBN: 0375704035
Page Count: 1173
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1982
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
Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s...
The acclaimed author of The Underground Railroad (2016) follows up with a leaner, meaner saga of Deep South captivity set in the mid-20th century and fraught with horrors more chilling for being based on true-life atrocities.
Elwood Curtis is a law-abiding, teenage paragon of rectitude, an avid reader of encyclopedias and after-school worker diligently overcoming hardships that come from being abandoned by his parents and growing up black and poor in segregated Tallahassee, Florida. It’s the early 1960s, and Elwood can feel changes coming every time he listens to an LP of his hero Martin Luther King Jr. sermonizing about breaking down racial barriers. But while hitchhiking to his first day of classes at a nearby black college, Elwood accepts a ride in what turns out to be a stolen car and is sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory that looks somewhat like the campus he’d almost attended but turns out to be a monstrously racist institution whose students, white and black alike, are brutally beaten, sexually abused, and used by the school’s two-faced officials to steal food and supplies. At first, Elwood thinks he can work his way past the arbitrary punishments and sadistic treatment (“I am stuck here, but I’ll make the best of it…and I’ll make it brief”). He befriends another black inmate, a street-wise kid he knows only as Turner, who has a different take on withstanding Nickel: “The key to in here is the same as surviving out there—you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course.” And if you defy them, Turner warns, you’ll get taken “out back” and are never seen or heard from again. Both Elwood’s idealism and Turner’s cynicism entwine into an alliance that compels drastic action—and a shared destiny. There's something a tad more melodramatic in this book's conception (and resolution) than one expects from Whitehead, giving it a drugstore-paperback glossiness that enhances its blunt-edged impact.
Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s novel displays its author’s facility with violent imagery and his skill at weaving narrative strands into an ingenious if disquieting whole.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-53707-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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