by Gemma Liviero ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2013
An absorbing account of loyalty and love in wartime, freshened by unusual historical events.
In Nazi-occupied Poland, a half-Jewish boy searches for his blonde, blue-eyed sister in Liviero’s debut novel.
At first, young Henrik isn’t very fond of his younger sister Greta, but his parents make him promise, in return for some special treats, to always look after her. When Poland later falls under the Nazi yoke, Henrik’s Jewish father must separate from the family; as a result, they’re defenseless when a Nazi officer kidnaps Greta. Henrik is horrified to learn of the Eindeutschung, or “Germanization,” program, in which fair-haired, blue-eyed children in occupied territories are abducted, assessed and trained for adoption by Germans. Those who don’t make the grade are killed or sent to concentration camps. Henrik, now a young, artistic teenager, is galvanized to keep his promise and rescue his sister. During his search, he hides out with resistance fighters and sympathetic Poles and meets a courageous young woman named Rebekah (who also narrates the story). Liviero writes a dramatic, heartfelt tale based on a little-known aspect of the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of children are estimated to have been kidnapped for the Eindeutschung program; for that reason, readers may find it strange that the novel gives Greta’s experience such short shrift, barely describing it in these pages. It’s also disappointing how easily Henrik finds needles in haystacks amid the chaos of war. That said, Liviero nicely portrays the uncertainties, tentative friendships and difficult choices of a fugitive, as well as the tenderness of new love. An emotional epilogue set in 1953 catches readers up on each character’s fate.
An absorbing account of loyalty and love in wartime, freshened by unusual historical events.Pub Date: July 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0646904856
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Florence Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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