Seriously brilliant, seriously flawed, ambitious, and delicious.
D.H. Lawrence, Jackie Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Lionel Trilling, Lady Constance Chatterley, and a host of others meet in an inspired fusion of fact and fiction.
To appreciate the delights of MacLeod's masterful novel, which takes its title from the original title of Lady Chatterley's Lover, one must have the patience to let it emerge from some dubious decisions about where to begin and how to unfold. These miscalculations recede as the full measure of the book becomes clear, about halfway through its more than 600 pages; MacLeod's material might have provided another author with several novels, a few stories, and an essay or two. One plotline—"The Exile"—unfolds in Lawrence's time, exploring the "ever-expanding ‘club’ of the aggrieved" he created by modeling his characters on life. Another—"The Subversive"—tracks Jackie Kennedy in the run-up to the 1960 election. A fictional FBI agent photographs Jackie at the New York obscenity trial over Chatterley; he becomes entangled in Hoover's plot to take down JFK while she meets Lionel Trilling to discuss the book. A third plotline covers the British obscenity trial in 1960; this section includes some lively fourth-wall–breaking and manages to nearly morph into a page-turner. But how closely is it based on the transcripts? Again and again, one feels eager to know where fact meets fiction—did the novelist Barbara Wall really write this wonderful, long letter to the defense attorney?—but the author is not inclined to tell us. "I have included letters and documents that have been faithfully reproduced; other such items have been invented, condensed, added to or modified for clarity," she writes at the end of the book. If you want more, she continues, go back to the original sources. Call us lazy, but we might prefer more detailed notes. Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here. At a time when sex is so often linked with exploitation and abuse, Lawrence's central equation between physical passion and profound emotional connection is moving and nearly exotic. MacLeod's interpretation of this gospel includes a lovely Lawrentian scene of sex in a library and a thought, attributed to Jackie Kennedy, about the power derived from sex: "the secret act of beholding the public, daily person—the lover, sanctioned or illicit—transformed in one's presence into a private, raw spirit."
Seriously brilliant, seriously flawed, ambitious, and delicious.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63557-610-8
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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