An inviting, though dialogue-heavy, dive into the fragile world of a fading empire.
Howse’s literary novel follows a Russian woman in the waning days of the Soviet Union.
Nadezhda “Nadia” Mikhailovna is the daughter of a shipping clerk and a factory worker. At a young age, she moves with her family from Estonia to Odessa. At 16, she’s sent back to Estonia to live with her grandmother, a spirited woman who weathered World War II, in the city of Tallinn. While in Estonia, Nadia learns of an “occurrence” at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant that forces the evacuation of a place called Chernobyl. After visiting with Grandma, Nadia is off to see her sister, Nastya, in Kiev. She also interacts frequently with her childhood friend Ida Ivanova, an ethnic German who had “gone to a boarding school for orphans.” Ida undergoes shock therapy before she eventually gets to live in an apartment with a computer scientist. As the pensive Nadia goes from place to place and interacts with many people, readers learn her thoughts and impressions. She considers history to be “a melancholy treasure-house” and often reflects on her own and others’ memories. For example, Nadia embarks on a playful mission to find the grave of a cat that died in 1940 simply because the act helps an old man remember his family. Throughout the novel, the author provides a rich cross-section of the population: Nadia’s grandmother recollects how, during World War II, she “rode to Berlin on the gun mantlet of a T-34-85,” and her brother-in-law, a police officer, asks repetitive questions. Bland dialogue, however, sometimes drains momentum (“He asked about you and your friend. He said he saw you earlier” or “Your clothes are in the dryer”). As realistic as such exchanges may be, they can make scenes drag. But on the whole, Nadia’s journey is a memorable one. She comes of age in places as diverse as Estonia and Ukraine, which, while beset by Soviet malaise, abound with colorful characters.
An inviting, though dialogue-heavy, dive into the fragile world of a fading empire.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9781738788651
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Nummist Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
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
© 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.
