At times lyrical, at times puzzling and frustratingly opaque, and at times as dry as desert dust, this novel is nevertheless...
Chamberlin (The Sword of God, 2012, etc.) delivers the last volume in her trilogy of historical novels tracking the tumultuous lives of three main characters and a cast of thousands as Muhammad’s folowers spread his religion before and after his death.
In the seventh century, yin and yang and monotheism and polytheism fight it out in the desert as the Muslim religion spreads. Khalid ibn al-Walid abu Sulayman, a brilliant general who at first resists Muhammad but then converts to become his “sword of god,” fights his way through Arabia but meets a tragic end; the mysterious Sitt Sameh (aka Sejah bint al-Harith), Khalid’s “bastard daughter,” clings to pre-Muslim ways, resisting the spread of the new religion and fighting against Khalid; and Rayah, Sameh’s 12-year-old daughter, journeys from girlhood to womanhood and superficially embraces the new religion, marrying a Muslim and carrying his child while keeping the faith with the old ways from “the Time of Ignorance,” including her magical healing powers and a jinn as an alternate husband. Along the way, the novel plumbs family feuds and secrets—including the near-matricide of Sejah by Rayah and the shabby treatment of Khalid by his rival and distant cousin, Omar ibn al-Khattab. Chamberlin has woven a colorful if complicated tapestry chronicling the difficult birth of a new religion. Her evocation of the harsh world of the desert, its peoples and its spiritual aura is at times brilliant and beautiful. Her insights into the differences between men and women are often acute, though they are sometimes skewed by feminist dogma; in this tale, the only truly sympathetic male is a eunuch. Parts of the novel are plodding, and its numerous narrators and disparate strands will make it hard going for many readers. And despite a helpful dramatis personae and family tree, the yarn is made harder to understand by its throngs of characters with complicated Arabic names (sometimes belonging to more than one person). By spreading the limelight over so many characters, Chamberlin’s novel diminishes insight into each.
At times lyrical, at times puzzling and frustratingly opaque, and at times as dry as desert dust, this novel is nevertheless worth the trek for those interested in Middle Eastern history.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1936940615
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Epigraph Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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