Unsworth’s luscious history is ripe territory for a dialogue on the ever-present struggle against intolerance, a seemingly...
A richly imagined novel of the Middle Ages, filled with questions of race, God and fidelity, from the Booker Prize–winning Unsworth (The Song of the Kings, 2003, etc.).
In 1149, King Roger ruled a Sicily of surprising diversity—wrestled from Arabs not 50 years prior, the island was a peaceable home for Jews, Moslems, Greeks, Lombards and the newly conquering Christian Normans. Praised for his shrewdness in keeping this cultural mix in harmonious balance, King Roger is now bending to a certain pressure, one that is demanding a singularly Christian Sicily. Moslems are losing land grants and becoming serfs on their own property; Jewish cemeteries are being desecrated; and the sovereign’s Greek mosaic artisans are being replaced by inferior Normans. But in the beginning, this is all beyond the scope of Thurstan Beauchamp, assistant to Yosuf Ibn Mansur, chief financial officer to the King. Thurstan, an innocent and a bit of a dandy, had his dreams of knighthood crushed when his father entered a monastery, taking with him all of Thurstan’s inheritance. Thankfully, Thurstan, adept at languages, was plucked from the King’s guard by Yosuf, who is grooming Thurstan for a career of back-room power. Sinister forces, humiliated by their defeat in the last crusade, have plans for Thurstan and his potential to betray Yosuf in the name of Christendom. In the various intrigues of state (negotiating with revolutionary Serbs, delivering money to an assassin, spying for Yosuf), Thurstan encounters his childhood sweetheart Alicia, now a rich widow back from Jerusalem and promising Thurstan marriage, a knighthood and a place in society. While he dreams of the pure Alicia, he beds the beautiful Nesrin, an incomparable dancer he procured for the King. Yosuf tutors Thurstan on the necessity of suspicion—but too late, for soon, Thurstan becomes an expendable pawn in an international power struggle. Told that Alicia has been kidnapped, Thurstan is asked to sign a declaration of treason against Yosuf, forced to choose between his own faith and ideals, and another’s.
Unsworth’s luscious history is ripe territory for a dialogue on the ever-present struggle against intolerance, a seemingly inevitable human frailty.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-50963-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
