An ingeniously constructed, if slightly uneven, historical page-turner.
One man’s escape from slavery irrevocably transforms the lives of two women in Friedland’s latest historical novel.
The author reimagines the lives of two important 19th-century Americans: Ann Phillips, a prominent Boston abolitionist, and Anthony Burns, who escaped slavery by sneaking aboard a ship to Boston. Their stories are intertwined with the narrative of fictional Southern belle Colette Randolph, who befriends Anthony in Richmond, Virginia, before his flight to the North. Both Ann and Colette are passionately against slavery, but the women’s anti-slavery efforts can only go so far. Ann is limited by her poor health, and Colette is hampered by her restrictive role as the wife of the man who founded one of Richmond’s most successful tobacco factories. Ann contributes to the abolitionist cause by writing speeches for her husband, Wendell, a prominent lecturer who champions the “enslaved, the downtrodden, the persecuted, at every opportunity.” After a chance meeting with Anthony, Colette surreptitiously gives him reading lessons before he flees to Boston. Anthony’s capture and prosecution under the Fugitive Slave Act ultimately transforms both women’s lives in monumental yet hidden ways. Friedland’s story of how these two very different women clandestinely help Anthony build a future also speaks to how important women were to the abolitionist movement. “History is a finicky friend,” Friedland writes, but there is nothing finicky about the impeccable research that forms the backbone of this novel. Evocative period detail abounds in Friedland’s work; characters are pulled directly from history. In addition to Ann and Anthony, Henry David Thoreau makes an appearance, and many other prominent figures come up in conversation. Colette, however, never springs to life as vividly as Ann or Anthony. Moreover, there is not enough interaction between Colette and Anthony in Richmond to believe that she eventually becomes “preoccupied about Anthony all the time.” By contrast, Ann and Wendell’s marriage contains all the minor annoyances of any contemporary long-term relationship. The nuanced depiction of Ann and Wendell’s marriage and Friedland’s atmospheric storytelling are enough to make the reader overlook these minor flaws.
An ingeniously constructed, if slightly uneven, historical page-turner.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9781684632145
Page Count: 328
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2023
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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