A worthy addition to WWII resistance literature.
Historical novelist Smith (Scarred, 2016, etc.) relates the heroic efforts of one extraordinary woman during World War II.
In June 1940, 24-year-old Belgian Andrée “Deedee” de Jongh is working as a nurse’s aide in a hospital in occupied Brussels. Her patients are British soldiers, injured near Dunkirk. After they’re healed, the soldiers are collected by the Nazis and shipped to work camps in Germany. One day, Deedee performs an act of defiance, pouring a foul-smelling solution onto the bandages of a nearly healthy patient, which leads the Germans inspecting the ward to overlook her young charge. She soon devises a plan to rescue more British soldiers, including downed airmen, and get them back to England so that they may fight again. The intricate path to freedom includes safe houses from Belgium to southern France, employing master forgers to create appropriate documents, and a particular man, Florentino Goikoetxea, who, together with Deedee, guides the soldiers across the forbidding Pyrenees by foot. The British government agrees to provide financial support, giving Deedee the code name “Postwoman.” By the time Deedee is captured by the Gestapo in January 1943, she and other members of the resistance movement have saved hundreds of lives. This novel’s historical elements are verifiable: the real Deedee was, in fact, formally recognized by King George VI of England for her deeds. But Smith’s imagination supplies many of the secondary characters as well as the hint of romance between Deedee and one of her fliers. The prose often lacks emotional flourish, but its consistent reportorial tone keeps the story on track and maintains its quick pace. Indeed, some passages are succinctly chilling; for example, here’s Smith’s description of Deedee seeing herself in the mirror for the first time after a two-year imprisonment in the Ravensbruck work camp: “she was looking at a dirty, gray-haired, shriveled old hag....She only saw a cadaver.”
A worthy addition to WWII resistance literature.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 97819790092036
Page Count: 242
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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