This novel meanders more than the "Odyssey" to which it frequently pays homage.
In the waning days of Prohibition, a young woman derives life lessons from artifacts of the ancient world.
In Tessaro’s (The Perfume Collector, 2014, etc.) latest novel, Maeve, whose childhood was overshadowed by her father’s early death, escapes her North Boston neighborhood for New York City. But soon she’s back, defeated by stints as a taxi dancer and, after a hooch-fueled suicide attempt, asylum inmate. Living with her embittered mother and looking for work at the worst possible time—in the middle of the Great Depression—Maeve dyes her red hair blonde to avoid anti-Irish prejudice and stumbles onto a job in an antiques shop, Winshaw and Kessler Antiquities. Co-owner Mr. Winshaw appears to be permanently absent, off on archaeological digs, occasionally sending back treasures such as a Harrow Painter Greek vase, circa 480-470 B.C.E., which is acquired by the mysterious Van der Laar family. Maeve, who now goes by May, is sent by Mr. Kessler to complete the sale at the Van der Laars’ seaside mansion, where the daughter of the house, Diana, recognizes her—they were co-residents of the asylum, although Diana was in the affluent wing. May and Diana form a friendship that is complicated by several factors, not least Diana's playboy brother James’ interest in May and the fact that Diana’s wealth and connections expose May to unlimited alcohol. Although purporting to be Diana’s protector and May’s potential rescuer, James is mostly absent pursuing the family’s obscure and possibly criminal dealings in South Africa’s diamond trade. After May turns up drunk at Diana’s in-town pied-à-terre, her friend conducts the 1930s equivalent of an intervention. Now May confines her drinking to trysts with James. Another subplot involving May’s Italian neighbors highlights the stark contrast between May’s rootlessness and the allure of conventional domestic life. However, too often the quandaries and inner turmoil May experiences are described rather than shown.
This novel meanders more than the "Odyssey" to which it frequently pays homage.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-235754-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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