A complicated morality tale with plenty of operatic intrigue and wartime history.
In Thiel’s historical novel, an understudy for a celebrated soprano of the French Opera gets her big break in 1930s Germany, with life-altering consequences.
It’s 1938, and the beautiful 32-year-old soprano Yvonne Chevallier has yet to make her debut on the stage of the prestigious Paris Opera. For the past two years, she has been the understudy of the current diva, Madeleine Moreau, a position Madeleine acquired for her—a crumb thrown to a potential competitor to keep her out of the spotlight. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler’s troops are on the march, and war with France on the horizon. Against her better judgment, Madeleine accepts an invitation from the late composer Richard Wagner’s daughter to sing in her father’s Tristan und Isoldein the small Bavarian town of Bayreuth. However, after six weeks of rehearsal, Madeleine is wracked with guilt about being in Nazi Germany. The day before the premiere, which Hitler is slated to attend, she heads back to Paris. Yvonne, to her own great surprise, is called upon to step into the starring role, and she debuts to a standing ovation. At the afterparty, Hitler calls her an “enchantress,” and a photographer snaps a photo of her with the dictator. The rave reviews make their way to Paris, as does the photo, which ends Yvonne’s employment at the Paris Opera. Theile’s dramatic narrative about two opera singers facing choices of conscience effectively peeks behind the curtain of a professional world of ego-driven backstabbing and betrayal. More gripping and disturbing, however, is the complex story of Paris under siege, of Yvonne and Madeleine’s changing relationship, and of Yvonne’s struggle to balance her loyalty to France with her passion for the stage. Increasingly ensnared by her own ambition, Yvonne emerges as an engaging and frustrating main character.
A complicated morality tale with plenty of operatic intrigue and wartime history.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781639108619
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Alcove Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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