While the role of what Charlie calls “the left-wing Jewish intellectual mafia” during the Cold War remains fascinating (at...
A conspiracy-theory novel about spies, lies and personal loyalty set within the insulated world of left-liberal New York intellectuals during the Cold War era.
Feldman (Next To Love, 2011) begins her novel on the day Kennedy was shot in 1963, tying narrator Nell’s personal marital drama to national events. Something bad has happened to Nell’s husband, Charlie, but before revealing exactly what that something is, Nell relives their relationship: The two meet in 1948 as college students (Barnard and Columbia), both attending on the GI Bill. From the beginning, Nell, who joined the military to escape a difficult home life, is more the leftist firebrand than Charlie, whose Jewish awareness of the Holocaust has strengthened his patriotism. After Charlie lands a job at the (fictional) magazine Compass, an avant-garde, anti-Stalinist, left-leaning intellectual journal not unlike Commentary or the Partisan Review, he and Nell marry. Before long, he becomes editor in chief; Nell becomes a staff writer. They rent a big apartment on the Upper West Side, send their daughter to private school, attend literary soirées with the likes of Mary McCarthy and Robert Lowell. While Nell pushes Charlie to be less timid as an editor, they survive the McCarthy era and subsequent Communist witch hunts only mildly scathed. They support civil rights; Charlie is the first to publish King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” By Kennedy’s election, cracks have appeared within both their marriage and their intellectual circle. It's to Feldman’s credit that until Nell jumps to the aftermath of the 1963 tragedy, readers will suspect without being sure which of several characters, including Charlie, are not exactly who they seem. Perhaps the strongest section of the novel is Charlie’s journal, in which he struggles through moral dilemmas without Nell’s penchant for self-righteousness.
While the role of what Charlie calls “the left-wing Jewish intellectual mafia” during the Cold War remains fascinating (at least to liberal intellectuals), the schematic quality of Feldman’s plot and characters limits the reader’s engagement.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9344-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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