A well-researched, engrossing tale with a strong French hero for fans of historical fiction.
A young woman enters the household of one of French history’s most famous mistresses, Madame du Barry, in this novel.
In 1788, Véronique Clair has left behind her home in Burgundy and a marriage proposal to apprentice in the household of Madame du Barry at the Château de Louveciennes in a small suburb of Paris. On the way, she meets fellow apprentices Chloe and Pauline, and all three grapple with the feelings of being far from home as well as examining the realities of working as servants in a noble household. The household manager, Gaspard, takes an instant dislike to Véronique, a Black woman. He demands to see the papers that prove she was born free merely to cause her discomfort. Flinn’s sequel explores the options for women in the lower classes of French society, particularly Black women, as Véronique struggles to find her place among her white counterparts at Louveciennes. Not only does Madame du Barry make the occasional appearance in the story, but the author also delivers a reimagining of the real-life Louis-Benoit Zamor. Zamor, a Black page and du Barry’s confidant, is an intriguing inclusion. At one point, Véronique muses: “I’d noticed, at dinners, the guests always seemed to be more interested in the page than in Madame. They were always asking her about Zamor, as if he were a child or a prop that didn’t speak. Many times, he would stare straight ahead, his expression flat, as if bored of it all.” He becomes intertwined with Véronique as the story progresses, with Flinn expertly blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Also included in the tale is a glimpse of citizens’ rising dissatisfaction with the lavish lifestyles of the French nobility as Véronique and her fellow apprentices stay at a rural inn, emphasizing that the story’s time period is practically on the eve of the French Revolution. Though perhaps a bit brief (only 127 pages), the novel is a satisfying, soul-searching, and exciting continuation of the hero’s saga, ultimately leaving readers hoping for another installment.
A well-researched, engrossing tale with a strong French hero for fans of historical fiction.Pub Date: July 6, 2023
ISBN: 979-8986060033
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Gilded Orange Books
Review Posted Online: July 31, 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
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
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