A delightful novel filled with warmth, music, and an obvious love of Bach.
A young boy sings for Johann Sebastian Bach in this richly textured tale of music and life.
After Bach’s death in 1750, organ-maker Stefan Silbermann recalls a part of his boyhood in 1723, when his widowed father sends him to Leipzig to try out for a boys’ choir under Bach, then a church cantor. Bach’s goal is to set to music passages from the Bible, specifically the Passion according to Saint Matthew, for Good Friday. He accepts the carrot-haired Stefan, who has a beautiful voice that causes jealousy and prompts bullying from the other boys. Early on, Stefan learns that the boys must do their homework or their teacher (not Bach) will “smite” them with a cane. He runs away but returns and spends time in the school’s prison for another’s offense. Then Bach invites him to live for a while with his family in a home filled with musical instruments and people, “a place without privacy and a world without secrets.” Meanwhile, Stefan finds favor with Anna Magdalena, Bach’s second wife, and Catharina, his oldest child. Anna Magdalena has a wonderful singing voice and blue eyes that remind him of flowers. As a woman, she is not permitted to sing in church. Stefan and Catharina have a sweet friendship as they chase butterflies together and he begins to love her, but she only likes him back. Though demanding, Bach is a kind and deeply religious man. “Without charity we are nothing,” he tells Stefan, “no more than a sounding brass or tinkling cymbal....We are all orphans before the Lord.” Yet the great man has a sense of humor. “You know that Luther wrote ‘Ein fest Burg’ when he was sitting on the privy?” “No.” “A musical prayer written mid-crap. You can’t be proud when imagination strikes.” The story is rich in its descriptions of music, devotion to God, and the daily hardships of 18th-century life. And finally, this is perhaps the author’s best description: A man’s face “had a tinge of waxen yellow to it, as if an embalmer had started work but left off for his lunch.”
A delightful novel filled with warmth, music, and an obvious love of Bach.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63557-067-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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