What, if anything, is Gore Vidal up to in this long, stylish, densely busy but totally undramatic novel of the Persian Empire, circa 520-445 B.C.? Occasionally he seems to be interested in presenting shrewd alternative versions of textbook history (particularly the Greek-Persian wars), the sort of dusted-off, backroom politics he managed quite well in his American historicals (Burr, 1876). More often he settles down into comparative theology—as his narrator, a grandson of prophet Zoroaster, is somehow able to visit all the great Greek philosophers and Eastern mystics of this remarkable era (Buddha, Confucius, etc.), trying on their theories and asking them the Great Questions. But most of the time Vidal merely seems content to string along incidents, anecdotes, artifacts, and rituals of the period—in a sort of picaresque travelogue with little shape and no momentum whatsoever. We begin in Athens, 445 B.C., where old, blind Cyrus Spitama—the ambassador from Persia—is infuriated by Herodotus' version of "the Persian wars" and responds by dictating his memoirs to nephew Democritus. Cyrus remembers his early years: his special status (as grandson of prophet Zoroaster) at the intrigue-ridden court of Great King Darius, where he grows up alongside Darius' son Xerxes—who saves Cyrus' life (a raging-boar attack), leads some youthful pranks in licentious Babylon, but will always feel doomed because of Darius' usurpation (via murder) of the Persian throne. Cyrus also recalls the real cause of the Greek-Persian Wars—the meddling, opportunistic advice of ambitious Greek hangers-on at Darius' court—and his own efforts to encourage Persian expansion to the east rather than the west. And, chiefly, Cyrus recollects his journeys to the east as Persia's trade-treaty ambassador. To India in search of iron and allies ("If Darius was obliged to walk about naked with a broom in order to gain India, he would")—where he hears the credos of Gosala, Mahavira, and Buddha, witnesses a horse sacrifice, takes an Indian wife, survives a flood, and observes treacherous palace revolutions. And then, after a brief sojourn back in Persia (Xerxes' ascension), to Cathay—where he is taken prisoner, sees vast human sacrifices, meets the sage of Taoism (here called Li Tzu), and gets deeply involved in the power-struggle between a Cathayan dictator and Confucius. (Cyrus finds Confucius a "nag" and an atheist. . . but the most impressive man of all.) This brings Cyrus up to about age 40—and then Vidal, apparently running out of energy, wraps up the next 20 years of his life (the decline and murder of Xerxes, more Greek-Persian conflict) in about 50 pages. . . plus an epilogue in which nephew Democritus suggests his atomic theory as an answer to Cyrus' eternal question: who created the world? Unfortunately, this loose theological-quest framework—what happens when a monotheistic, Heaven/ Hell believer is exposed to the gamut of Eastern philosophy or Western science? —is hardly enough to hold Vidal's meandering novel together. And though Cyrus' crisp, sarcastic tone often livens things up, the sheer onslaught of names and places and byzantine mini-plots (none of them developed with any depth or drama) will leave most readers confused and disappointed. Lots of jauntily fictionalized fact, legend, geography, and exotic cultural sociology, then—but only those with a great knowledge of (or appetite for) this theo-historical territory will want to ride along the whole length of Cyrus' journey.
Pub Date: March 26, 1981
ISBN: 0375727051
Page Count: 592
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1981
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
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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