A magnificently researched and dramatically captivating tale of a troubled empire.
A historical novel dramatizes the Ottoman Empire’s struggle to survive in the late 19th century.
In the 1870s, Europeans derisively joked that the Ottoman Empire was the “sick man of Europe.” Plagued by debt, government corruption, and sectarian conflict, the once-proud power seemed to face a bleak future, a perilous set of circumstances intelligently captured by Gall (Of Mouse and Magic, 2011). Mithat Pasha, the president of the Council of State, conspires to depose Sultan Abdülaziz, a politically useless and profligate failure. But his successor, Murat, turns out to be emotionally unstable, and so his stepbrother is chosen to ascend to the throne, becoming Sultan Abdülhamit II. Mithat, a progressive reformer, aspires to remodel the government to emulate the British parliamentary model, based on a new constitution, hoping that an infusion of democratic representation will promote civic solidarity: “We need to build a government that inspires the people to be loyal to the empire, rather than to their ethnic and religious community, their millet.” But Abdülhamit has other ideas and is insistent that any reform leave his autocratic clout intact. In addition, he worries that Mithat, who is highly regarded by European leaders, is more an ambitious rival than a trusted confidant. Abdülhamit gives his consent to the drafting of a constitution and the founding of a parliament but also strips Mithat of his duties and banishes him to Smyrna. Meanwhile, the possibility of war with Russia becomes ever more likely as that nation encourages conflict between the empire’s Muslims and Christians to trigger a pretext for a land-grabbing invasion. Gall’s historical expertise is notable, and he artfully brings to life the political intrigue of an empire sliding into irrelevance. The Ottoman Empire emerges as a kind of protagonist all its own, eager to become strengthened by its embrace of modernity and the West but also anxious about surrendering its cultural and religious identity. A subplot that follows Abdülhamit’s wife, Flora, a Belgian-born Christian who settles in Istanbul, converts to the Muslim faith, and devotes herself to helping disenfranchised refugees, poignantly illustrates the complexity of the empire’s religious fissures.
A magnificently researched and dramatically captivating tale of a troubled empire.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 433
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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