A dramatically captivating and historically edifying novel.
A fictional account, based on true events, of two mentally ill women in different historical eras and their struggle within psychiatric institutions.
Rigmor Blumenthal started to suffer fits of mania around 1926, when she was 15 years old, and also became prone to bouts of implacable depression, but doctors simply classified her as an “hysteric,” as was common at the time. She’s now 23 years old and living in Germany; her condition has only worsened, and her sister, Inga, who’s very protective of her, tries desperately to help, recruiting psychiatrist Arnold Richter to become her sibling’s “compassionate friend.” When Rigmor’s condition doesn’t improve, Inga sends her to an institution for treatment. Inga even ensures, by way of making a generous donation to the institute, that Arnold is given a position there to vigilantly protect her. However, the Nazis in power at the time are willing to go to “gruesome lengths” to “eradicate disease and decrease expenditure”—a policy that places Rigmor in mortal danger, especially because she is also Jewish. Over the course of the novel, the author deftly weaves together two moving stories—Inga’s attempt to rescue Rigmor from the sanatorium and flee to Switzerland, and later, in the 1980s, Inga’s work to help her granddaughter, Sabine, who finds herself in a predicament similar to Rigmor’s, as she’s mentally ill and confined involuntarily to a psychiatric institution in Massachusetts.
True notes that the “bones of the story are true,” and her novel has a poignant feeling of verisimilitude. Her depiction of Nazi Germany’s treatment of the infirm is vividly harrowing; children are the subjects of experiments and starved, patients are forcibly sterilized, and people deemed incurable are sent to the gas chambers. Anyone who voices an opposition to these policies risks their lives to do so. Moreover, the author paints a remarkably sensitive picture of Inga’s complex psyche—on the one hand, she’s a formidable person, full of self-possession, and on the other, she’s terrified to discuss her past. When Sabine presses her to do so, Inga does her best to evade her inquiries but falters. “That she allowed the conversation to get so out of hand was either a sign of her old age or an indication of a strength that Inga had not previously seen in Sabine….Perhaps it was a slow and painful excavation of a past that was getting more difficult to keep buried.” The plot is exceedingly complex and can slow to a crawl at times, but readers’ patience will be well rewarded, as True manages to convey a heartbreaking story without adding any sense of false sentimentality to the narrative. She wisely lets the reader encounter the drama without sensationalizing it, as it’s a tale that hardly needs rhetorical embellishment. Her prose style is simple and matter-of-fact, and it’s a manner of writing that’s suitable to the subject matter. Overall, this is a wrenching story that’s both historically scrupulous and artistically nimble—an impressive and rare combination.
A dramatically captivating and historically edifying novel.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-78904-460-7
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Top Hat Books
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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