A lovely import with an unusual setting.
In 1912 Dublin, 14-year-old Mollie Carberry becomes an unexpected suffragist.
At first she sneaks out after her older sister, Phyllis, only out of curiosity, but when Phyllis ends up at a suffrage meeting, Mollie stays to listen and is impressed. Denying votes to women, Mollie decides, is just as unfair as her brother’s getting the best bits of their Sunday roast chicken, which maddens her. Along with her best school friend, Nora, Mollie attempts to balance participating in the suffrage movement with keeping out of trouble with her parents, her more conservative classmates, her teachers, and, heaven forbid, the police. Irish author Carey (not to be confused with the American novelist for teens of the same name) presents a gentle and readable account of Mollie’s activism and a charming picture of Dublin life at the time. Not only are all the characters white, they’re all Catholic, and many of them are related to each other. The story unfolds as a series of letters Mollie writes to her friend Frances, away at boarding school; her voice is reminiscent of another historic heroine, Anne of Green Gables, only with an Irish lilt. The plot is realistic and satisfying. Mollie and Nora don’t achieve greatness, but in the end they know they’ve made a contribution to a worthwhile cause.
A lovely import with an unusual setting. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-84717-847-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Nebula Award–winner and Hugo-finalist Friesner disappointingly offers humdrum fare based on Greek mythology. Meet Helen of Sparta, not yet of Troy. True to Spartan history, she’s a strong female (literally), and prepped by her mother to one day be queen. Though it’s true that the real Helen was probably a legitimate wrestler, Friesner has her spunky, stubborn and contrarian heroine dressing as a boy to be trained in sword-fighting beside her brothers Castor and Polydeceus. She then sneaks off with them to participate in the historic hunt of the Calydonian Boar . . . and at the end of the volume, prepares readers for a sequel by tagging along with Jason’s Argonauts. Friesner uses these legends as a backdrop for a Xena Warrior Princess–type of character of 21st-century sensibilities—with entertaining and popular results, but not uniquely or distinctively, and without much respect for or elucidation of the actual mythology. Some may enjoy the romp. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 24, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-375-87528-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
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