A rich story of intrigue and deception with some engaging twists and turns.
Alexander’s historical novel tells a story of Capt. Francis Light, the founder of the British colony in Penang, in what is now Malaysia.
Jim Lloyd starts his career at Fort William in Calcutta, India, where he works under the authority of his father’s representatives in a dissatisfying job as a junior office worker. Jim’s frustration about his work conditions and his desire to have a more consequential job cause him to take notice when a colleague asks, “What fires up yer passion, then?” Later, a chance meeting with trader James Scott inspires Jim to write a letter to Capt. Light and secure a position in Penang’s capital of George Town as an assistant and a “suitable chronicler” of Light’s life, as the latter “desires his name to be in the history books.” Upon arrival in Penang, Jim finds that it’s not the glorious colony that he anticipated but a grim and dangerous place, particularly compared to his earlier living arrangements. Still, as Jim encounters the perils of trade in Penang, he naïvely believes Light’s lies about a colony that Alexander effectively reveals as full of malaria, treachery, thievery, murder, and deceit. The author also spotlights Light’s and other colonists’ racism; for instance, early on, Jim asks to live with the Malay people in hopes of learning more of their religion and culture: “Light looked startled. ‘Whyever would you wish to do that?...You do realize you are asking to reside among pirates, Jim,’ barked Light.” Key to the story is the friendship between Jim and an intriguing Dutchman named Pieter Reinaert, and Alexander adeptly weaves Jim’s relationships into the history of Penang and the British East India Company. Along the way, Alexander reveals Light’s troubling relationship with Sultan Abdullah, the Queda ruler who ceded Penang to the East India Company based on false promises, and the author shows how these lies create tension that has the potential to start a war.
A rich story of intrigue and deception with some engaging twists and turns.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-9814954-42-6
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Penguin Random House SEA
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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