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
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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