This worthwhile read brings a little-known tragedy to vivid life.
A debut historical novel set in 19th-century Spain offers a trove of philosophical, social, and political clashes.
On April, 18, 1886, Cayetano Galeote Cotilla, a defrocked priest, shot and killed the bishop of Madrid in front of hundreds of witnesses. The murderer and the crime are real, and Battersby’s tale revolves around the punishment for the deed. Will Cayetano live or die? Enter two protagonists, also historical figures. One is the novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, “the most famous Spanish writer whom many English-speaking readers may not know by name or reputation.” The other is the eminent alienist (as psychiatrists were then called) Luis Simarro. Benito and Luis are former friends. Luis is a scientist with a special interest in the care of the mentally ill, called at the time degenerates. He is also a determinist. Benito is a fierce humanist, a believer in free will. Luis is convinced that Cayetano is mad, a degenerate born of a family with a sketchy genetic history. Benito wants to show that Cayetano is rational even though a finding of insanity might save his life. Cayetano is sentenced to death, but the judgment is later overturned. The real point of the engrossing story is the intrigue that is hinted at throughout. The political situation in Spain pervades everything and affects the outcome of the trial. The cast includes leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, the Royalists, the revolutionary Progressives, and others. Alliances are formed for convenience and broken for the same reason. Fortunes are ever shifting, mistrust abounds, and the country is weary. In the end, it is Benito who becomes Battersby’s intuitive hero, holding humane values and puzzling things out. Luis is deftly portrayed as a good man, but his research brings him to the brink of eugenics, the scariest of 19th-century pseudo-sciences. The author’s enthusiasm—and proselytizing—for Galdós’ books is touching and admirable (Maximiliano Rubín is one of the Spanish novelist’s characters). And Battersby’s rich details will transport readers to the turbulent era of his complex protagonists.
This worthwhile read brings a little-known tragedy to vivid life.Pub Date: March 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-913332-00-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: Tre Cappelli Editions
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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