Anne Rice's older sister, an energetic scene-setter, winds up her two-volume saga of tenth-century Europe begun with 1995's Devoted. A romance with elements of fantasy, Devoted told of the clash between Christianity and paganism. A raiding party of Vikings invaded the bishopric of Chantalon. Facing them were Chantalon's 23-year-old bishop, Owen, and his wife, Lady Elin of the Forest People, a pagan witch who called forth storms to drown the invaders. Borchardt wades into her sequel now with the returned Northmen trying to take charge of the river on which Chantalon lies. Owen and Elin discover this while they are out spying, looking over the Northmen's winter buildup for a spring offensive. Each page of Borchardt's relentless novel is composed of three parts gripping research and description to one part plot: A great deal of action is required to keep the narrative lively, and Borchardt supplies it. Movie stunts invade the script as well, with an unlikely swordfight between Owen and the Viking Hakon staged in the mud. Though Elin's witch-powers help rescue Owen from the Northmen, who have their own witches, she becomes pregnant after being raped by a Viking, while, throughout, she and Owen waver between ardor and recriminations. Since Chantalon hasn't enough men to defend itself for long, much less launch an attack against Hakon, Owen goes off to Britanny in search of allies, where he's offered help if he'll renounce Elin and marry a nobleman's daughter. Desperate, he agrees. Meanwhile, Hakon sends 12 berserkers to kill Owen and to steal Gynneth, Owen's bride. Although Owen (befriended by a philosopher magician, Elutides) slays the 12, Hakon nevertheless captures Elin, who's about to give birth, causing Owen to return for a final showdown with the Viking. Skulls split down to the teeth while hormonal interplay again reaches the same pulsing soft-porn hazes as in Devoted. Basically a lusty romance, with a gory overlay of duels and ambushes. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94272-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
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 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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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