Although the romance rings hollow, this is an intriguing re-imagining of Tudor England and the treacheries of court life.
What might have happened if Anne Boleyn had indeed borne a son to King Henry VIII?
Just 18 years old, William has ascended to the throne, taking the title Henry IX. Publically, he faces the threat of war, as well as the challenge of placating Protestant-Catholic tensions, prompting him to keep his older half sister Mary under house arrest. Privately, he is torn between a betrothal to the young princess of France, an alliance that might ease religious tensions at home, and his love for Minuette, a young woman taken in as a royal ward but without political capital. Elaborately threaded with historical details—including astrological charts by John Dee, intrigues orchestrated within his own court, and political maneuvers betwixt England, France and Spain—the second in Andersen’s (The Boleyn King, 2013) Boleyn family saga will appeal to fans of historical fiction. Yet, the romances suffer from implausible dialogue and flat characterization. Tempted by the very married Robert Dudley, as well as the hints of power suggested by John Dee’s private astrological reading, Elizabeth is reduced to a woman blinded by her own tightly tamped-down emotions. Speaking like 21st-century high school students, William and Dominic vie for Minuette’s affections. Exuberant William pursues Minuette despite his advisers’ cautions. Serious Dominic serves as William’s closest adviser, the only man who will speak the unvarnished truth to an unpredictable sovereign. He and Minuette despair of betraying their best friend yet cannot deny their true love, stealing kisses and spare moments behind William’s back. Meanwhile, Minuette plays amateur sleuth, dangerously toying with ambitious men as she tries to discover who murdered Alyce de Clare. Tensions rise as the love triangle becomes increasingly untenable and evidence points toward a traitor in the court.
Although the romance rings hollow, this is an intriguing re-imagining of Tudor England and the treacheries of court life.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-53411-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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