A far cry from his collection of contemporary stories, Legacies (1996), this first novel by Norton's editor in chief is a tale of romance and honor set against the turbulent Balkans just before WW I—a setting with particular relevance to current events. Foreshadowing present-day conflicts in the region, Lawrence incorporates lots of information into his narrative about the various groups with a stake in the area. Lawrence, though, wears his research lightly and uses a protagonist—Auberon Harwell, an Englishman—who, like the reader, learns as he goes along. A spy for powerful British interests, Auberon poses as a botanist interested in the unique flora of Montenegro, the one region of Serbia not controlled by the Turks. Traveling inland from the Adriatic, he stops first in the mountain village of Cetinje, where the British ambassador reveals his contempt for the natives and where Auberon romances a young missionary, Lydia Wadham, who teaches in the local girls' academy. Lydia also provides Auberon with an introduction to a powerful local clan that lives on the furthest border of Montenegro, near a strategic valley controlled by Moslems. There, Auberon befriends Danilo Pekoevi, a hero in the local resistance movement opposing the Turks, whose wife, Sofia, hopes to see Toma, her only remaining son, escape to America. Mostly out of love for the beautiful Sofia, Auberon helps Toma escape his violent patrimony, but not before the young man makes the local situation worse by impregnating a local Moslem girl, whose clan insists on a wedding. When she commits suicide, the fragile peace is breached, and Auberon's escape with Toma assumes heroic dimensions. In fact, the novel itself thrives on this very conflict between heroism and the demands of realpolitik. Lawrence's simple notion—that the heart can't always have what it wants—is enriched by the exotic textures of his setting. A lush, middlebrow drama that's perfect for the big screen—and could easily become the next English Patient, given the right director.
Pub Date: Aug. 11, 1997
ISBN: 0-374-21407-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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 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
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