A mesmeric peek into the modern dismantling of the Russian monarchy.
A debut historical novel depicts the fall of the Romanov family during the Russian Revolution.
In 1912, Charles Sydney Gibbes had tutored the Romanov children in English for about four years and had become a trusted extension of the family. Czarevich Alexei, the young heir to the throne and one of Gibbes’ pupils, is deathly ill, plagued by hemophilia, a condition his parents, Nicholas II and Alexandra, hide from the public. Out of desperation, Alexandra sends for Grigory Rasputin, an enigmatic holy man darkly and deftly drawn by Jorgenson, in hopes that his healing powers can revive Alexei. But Gibbes loathes the man, who has a reputation for coarse vulgarity, and worries that Rasputin's relationship to the imperial family has sullied its reputation during politically precarious times: “How holy could a man be if he were marked by a relentless devotion to fornication, adultery, drunkenness, boastfulness, and countless other corruptions?” Rasputin predicts the boy will recover, and when he does, that pronouncement takes on the air of a divine prophecy, elevating his status in the eyes of the Romanovs. But after Rasputin is murdered by political rivals, the Romanovs’ fortunes take a turn for the worse, and as a result of a popular uprising, Nicholas II is compelled to abdicate the throne. The imperial family is forced into exile and placed under house arrest, and Gibbes decides to loyally remain by its side to the morbid end despite ample opportunity to return to his native England. Jorgenson artfully brings to vivacious life the imperial family and showcases the full plumage of their moral complexity. Gibbes, too, is deliciously labyrinthine, especially when he wrestles with his respect for the religious faith he fails to summon for his own consolation. He is a brilliantly conceived portal into Romanov family life, sympathetic and intimate—Alexandra enlists him as her confessor—but still an outsider capable of some measure of detached objectivity. Most readers of course know in advance the plot’s conclusion, but it’s to Jorgenson’s considerable credit that this doesn’t dampen its dramatic power.
A mesmeric peek into the modern dismantling of the Russian monarchy.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4834-7204-1
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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