Detailed, compelling and ambitious historical fiction about the long struggle for Philippine independence.
A historical novel that dramatizes the Philippine Revolution at the close of the 19th century.
In her fiction debut, Palileo uses the life of idealistic young seminarian Placido Mendoza to tell the tempestuous story of the Philippine Revolution. The revolt began in 1896 when a clandestine Filipino independence movement, the Katipunan, was discovered by the Philippines’ Spanish colonial overlords. Palileo uses Mendoza’s interactions with a dozen prominent figures to weave a fast-moving, complex and sprawling tale along the lines of James Clavell’s Shogun (1975) or Gary Jennings’ The Journeyer (1984). Most readers will be unfamiliar with the long-simmering tensions between the Spanish friars, who exercised ruthless power to maintain control of the colony, and the titular indios, the common people who increasingly agitated for their freedom. Mendoza is an ilustrado, a college-educated member of the native population, and in Palileo’s well-staged opening scene set in 1872, the complacency of Mendoza’s world is shattered: He watches, horrified, as one of his clerical mentors is publicly executed by order of the colonial administration. Nine-year-old Andres Bonifacio is also in the crowd; his future as a revolutionary leader is foreshadowed by his angry comment: “God is white...Jesus is white...All the saints are white...No Indio would get past San Pedro, priest or no priest.” Palileo ably intertwines Mendoza’s story with that of the growing revolutionary movement and does an excellent job of capturing the intellectual tensions that led from the first uprisings against the Spanish to the Battle of Manila Bay. She highlights not only Mendoza and his personal struggles, but also the larger-than-life Filipino Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, who tends to steal every scene he’s in. Overall, the author skillfully develops the vectors of this tangled tale, illustrating how all sides attracted equally intelligent and passionate adherents. The story ends around 1898, leaving open the attractive prospect of a sequel.
Detailed, compelling and ambitious historical fiction about the long struggle for Philippine independence.Pub Date: June 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496021618
Page Count: 215
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
