A fictional reimagining of the ultimate fate of Lincoln’s famous assassin.
Artist and author Conrad (Last Boat to Cadiz, 2003, etc.) is best known for his 1952 novel Matador. But the author’s résumé also includes a stint as secretary to Nobel Prize–winning novelist Sinclair Lewis. In a compelling afterword, Conrad reveals that Lewis sketched out the entire plot of a fictional novel about John Wilkes Booth during a curious monologue in 1947. The pair decided to write the novel, originally titled Thus Ever To Tyrants, together, but their plans went awry. Now Conrad finishes the project, creating a Booth who still succeeds in shooting Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre but who manages to escape. He eventually makes his way to Gen. Robert E. Lee’s camp in Richmond, where Mathew Brady is taking Lee’s portrait. Booth expects to be hailed a hero, and so is startled by Lee’s furious response. “My poor friend, Abraham Lincoln and I had vastly different political ideas, but he was one of the finest men America has ever seen,” Lee shouts. “If indeed you are convinced you are the maniac who killed him, you should be hanged as an example from the nearest tree.” Here, Booth’s revolutionary zeal for the South remains unchanged, but he does realize the enormity of his trespass. Those who helped him are hanged for treason, while others, like Dr. Samuel Mudd, are imprisoned. Booth makes his way to the West, where he settles into a quiet life as John Richard Marlowe, going so far as to marry a Lincoln admirer. It all comes unraveled when journalist Langford Upham tracks the stage actor to his home in Montana, where not even Booth’s remarkable performance can save him from the final reveal.
A superfluous novel, more interesting as a literary artifact.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-57178-225-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Council Oak
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
11
GET IT
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
PROFILES
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
14
GET IT
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 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2022 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
