A carefully crafted tale that offers a fresh, woman-centered reevaluation of an ancient story.
A minor character in the Trojan War becomes the hero of this historical novel.
In the Iliad, Briseis finds herself the prize of Achilles when the famed warrior kills her husband, King Mynes. Achilles’ surrendering her to King Agamemnon is a turning point in the Trojan War, but her appearances are fleeting in Homer’s epic. Medieval poets will develop her character further, and the resulting romances will inspire Shakespeare, for whom Briseis becomes Cressida. Douglas goes back to the source while creating a distinctive hero. Here, Briseis accepts a loveless arranged marriage as her lot but discovers a sense of loyalty to Mynes when she’s treated as the spoils of war. Her beauty—and fiery spirit—attracts the attention of the “fair and honorable” Achilleus (the author uses the alternative spelling) after he kills Mynes. Accepting the role of Achilleus’ favorite would give her freedoms and luxuries other captives are denied, but to do so would dishonor her husband’s memory and herself. It’s only after she has prayed for release from Achilleus that she falls in love with him. By then, the gods have already intervened—or is she just playing a part decreed by the Fates? In making Briseis the hero of her story, Douglas skillfully gives center stage to women who are mostly silent pawns or invisible in the Iliad and most texts inspired by it. Briseis finds friends—and enemies—among the women captured by the Greeks. She forges alliances with Andromache—the wife of Achilleus’ greatest rival—and Helen of Troy. Whatever sides their husbands or lovers are on, these women must look out for themselves. But unless Douglas chooses to break with Homer—and the laws of Greek drama—an unhappy ending is ordained. Briseis begs Achilleus to forget about his honor and take her to his home so they can live in peace. This is where the narrative starts to strain credulity. Briseis’ desires are understandable, but her apparent ignorance of the roles of honor and a heroic death in her universe doesn’t make much sense—especially given her commitment to protecting her husband’s honor by not giving herself to Achilleus. That said, Douglas adds emotional heft to the bare bones of a foundational work of Western literature.
A carefully crafted tale that offers a fresh, woman-centered reevaluation of an ancient story.Pub Date: April 7, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-985529-86-9
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Penmore Press LLC
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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