An engaging and entertaining alternate take on a mammoth literary figure’s fate.
Squire imagines the murder of Charles Dickens in this historical novel.
The novel opens with Charles Dickens suffering a stroke while in the middle of writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood and dying in Kent, England. That’s all largely accepted as truth, but in this inventive and intriguing piece of historical fiction, the great British author is murdered, the victim of strychnine poisoning. When Dickens’ notes for Drood are stolen, retired bookkeeper and distant Dickens relative Dunston Burnett becomes convinced the two events are related. He begins an investigation that encompasses Dickens’ literary rivals, family, and others. During this investigation, running parallel to Scotland Yard Chief of Detectives Archibald Line’s inquiries, family secrets are uncovered, more murders are committed, and Burnett uses his relative’s unfinished Drood to lead him to pertinent information. All the while, Dickens’ beloved sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth, tries to protect his reputation from potential tawdriness as the world mourns his loss. A sweet secondary story, which eventually intertwines with the primary plot, depicts Georgina’s stableboy, Isaac, and parlor maid, Dulcet, falling in love. At the end of the novel, Burnett and Line are allies, so the reader may expect more exploits from the duo (“He didn’t know what the future held in store for him. Perhaps the tranquillity and solitude of a contented bachelorhood; perhaps another adventure in tandem with the iconic Archibald Line”). The novel is a delightful piece of reimagined history set against a backdrop of locations and characters that would make Dickens proud. It’s hard to tell where the history ends and the fiction begins in this twisty narrative (though the author includes a handy fact vs. fiction guide at the end of the book). References to many of Dickens’ works—including Oliver Twist, Bleak House, David Copperfield, and A Christmas Carol—and real figures from his life, such as Hogarth, his ex-wife, Catherine, and his girlfriend Ellen Ternan, are interspersed with fictional characters and storylines. All of it combines in an intriguing mystery, one worthy of one of the greatest writers in literary history.
An engaging and entertaining alternate take on a mammoth literary figure’s fate.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781685123581
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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.
