An absorbing saga.
A multilayered novel tracking the evolution of a lavishly wealthy Jewish banking family in the years preceding and during World War II.
The House of Goldbaum—a banking institution stretching across Europe—has financed railways and palaces and abetted world leaders; its influence is so ingrained that “on dull days, it was said, they hired the sun, just for themselves.” The business maintains its dominance by adhering to the old ways: communicating almost exclusively through letters written in Yiddish; prioritizing its Jewish heritage; and, most importantly, orchestrating marriages between Goldbaum houses to keep the businesses tightly linked. It’s this custom that spurs the marriage of headstrong Greta Goldbaum, from the Austrian house, to the second son of the London branch, buttoned-up, fastidious Albert. From the start, it’s an uneasy match. Greta wanders through the London Goldbaum mansion “perpetually off-kilter,” while Albert exhibits a greater interest in trapping butterfly specimens than in sleeping with his new wife. Meanwhile, rumblings of war affect business. The German government is seeking a loan to shore up its army; pogroms rage across Russia; and the Goldbaums vacillate between openly wielding political influence and “labor[ing] unobtrusively behind the seat of power, instrumental but overlooked.” It seems just as Greta and Albert learn to tolerate and then love one another, the Continent is forced into an arms race, compelling the Goldbaum houses to weigh allegiances to family and nation—and consider the waning scope of their influence in a world altered by war. In perspectives that alternate among Greta, Albert, and other well-constructed characters—Greta’s brother Otto; cousin Henri; and Karl, a Viennese sewer rat—Solomons (The Song of Hartgrove Hall, 2015) provides an achingly detailed yet sweeping narrative examining the anxieties of war and crumbling of the Old World order. Despite writing stilted dialogue, Solomons has an uncanny way of lulling readers into a complex sense of prewar unease—from the Goldbaums’ mansion to the Jewish Poor Boys' Home in Vienna—making for a rewarding look into the fragility of power and the complexities of Jewish identity in the early 20th century.
An absorbing saga.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1297-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
© Copyright 2024 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.
