A lighthearted work of historical fiction with some lurid twists.
World War II plays out very differently in Blencowe’s imaginative alternate history.
In a preface, the author ponders how World War I could have gone differently if fate had intervened in various ways. He then applies this what-if theme to the year 1941, portraying key real-life and fictional power players of Europe, America, and Japan in a globe-trotting yarn set during World War II. In this version of history, President Franklin Roosevelt struggles against the effects of President Herbert Hoover’s legacy, Nazi Hermann Goering makes a fatal mistake, and the Japanese print counterfeit American dollars in a scheme with frightening implications. As Roosevelt shouts and swears in the Oval Office, struggling to guide the United States through this treacherous era, a 24-year-old German spy named Louise comes across information that calls alliances into question. The novel dissects the largely economic motives of the world’s leaders in a wide array of scenarios yet still shows them to be unquestionably human. Their sexual desires, for example, are as strong as their hunger for power; the book depicts its leading women characters, such as Hitler’s companion Eva Braun and Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson, as uninhibited seductresses. It also characterizes British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as an incompetent, boorish alcoholic. World War II sagas are plentiful, but Blencowe succeeds in putting a unique spin on familiar events and creating plenty of new ones. He explores the darker connections among governments, corporations, and the military in an informed manner (“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests,” one character says) and connects subplots in wildly different locales with relative ease. Even when ruminations about Henry Ford as the architect of planned obsolescence give way to scenes of explicit erotica, the novel’s voice is consistent and holds up well, although some of its diatribes go on for too long. Overall, Blencowe offers a fantastical, entertaining take on what could have been.
A lighthearted work of historical fiction with some lurid twists.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-927750-45-2
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Hamilton Bay Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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