Lively and richly detailed.
The ambitious daughter of a famous illusionist grows up aboard a circus traveling through Europe—till the arrival of World War II throws her world into chaos.
Even within the traveling circus she’s always called home, Lena Papadopoulos has always felt different. Dependent on a wheelchair after a harrowing infant case of polio that also left her motherless, Lena has never been accepted by the other circus children; instead of playing with them, she spends her time reading and attending museum exhibits with her doting, overbearing father, Theo. Only within her studies does Lena feel truly at home—a brilliant student, she’s especially drawn to medicine and science, which is, she thinks, “where the real magic lay.” She passes her days poring over complicated anatomical diagrams and playing in the circus train’s hiding places—till the arrival of a runaway named Alexandre, whose unconscious body Lena stumbles across one day. Like Lena, Alexandre is an outsider—a Jew and an orphan—and, as he recovers from an illness aboard the train, he and Lena become fast friends over marathon games of gin rummy and shared snacks. Meanwhile, Theo takes wily Alexandre under his wing as an apprentice illusionist. But just as Lena’s life begins looking up, the circus’s crowds thin with Europe teetering on the precipice of war. And soon after Alexandre’s identifying papers go missing from the circus master’s office, SS officers capture Alexandre and Theo, whose parting words to his daughter—"I will find you. I promise”—echo in Lena’s ears for years to come. While Lena struggles to accept her father’s and Alexandre’s presumed deaths (unbeknownst to her, the two have been contracted to work as entertainers in a “model town” for Jews), all three fight to survive. Immersive and intricately plotted, this novel brings to life the precarious, colorful world of circus performance in prewar Europe, where nothing is as it seems, danger lurks around every corner, and success is a matter of confidence, luck, and risk. Lena, Alexandre, and Theo are lovable characters, each backed by three-dimensional backstories that expand and intersect satisfyingly as the novel progresses. Though the romantic thread is underdeveloped, Parikh has created a carefully researched historical debut whose bighearted, sensitive protagonist makes the reader’s emotional journey well worth it.
Lively and richly detailed.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-53998-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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