Hard battles form this satisfying novel’s throughline, some fought in the open but most won or lost in the heart.
As if weathering adolescence weren’t hard enough, war casts Fing into further maelstroms of terror and heartbreak in this sequel to Nine Open Arms (2014).
As a narrator, Josephine “Fing” Boon makes a particularly sharp-tongued, angry, and naïve observer of events. It’s hard to blame her for coming across as unlikable. The series of scourges she endures begins with having to leave school to take a job as hired companion to Liesl—a demanding, manipulative, and deeply traumatized child in the household of the Dutch town’s wealthy Cigar Emperor and his German wife, called, in the region’s Limburgish slang, the Pruusin. It continues with the departure of her first boyfriend, who returns a Nazi-sympathizing Blackshirt, and the unexpected arrival of what she deems her “Red Flood.” It escalates through the German occupation, increasing hardships, a devastating family breakup, and the rescue of one of her two sisters from being bundled aboard a train with a group of Jewish deportees…including, shockingly, the Pruusin. As the absorbingly complex narrative progresses, Fing isn’t the only character in the white-default cast apt to leave readers with conflicted sympathies. Coming almost as a relief, the emotional bombshells ultimately culminate in an air raid’s physical one that leaves Fing and readers poised with no end in sight.
Hard battles form this satisfying novel’s throughline, some fought in the open but most won or lost in the heart. (cast list, glossaries) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59270-269-5
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Chilling, difficult, and definitely not for readers without a solid understanding of the Holocaust despite the relatively...
A young boy grows up in Adolf Hitler’s mountain home in Austria.
Seven-year-old Pierrot Fischer and his frail French mother live in Paris. His German father, a bitter ex-soldier, returned to Germany and died there. Pierrot’s best friend is Anshel Bronstein, a deaf Jewish boy. After his mother dies, he lives in an orphanage, until his aunt Beatrix sends for him to join her at the Berghof mountain retreat in Austria, where she is housekeeper for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. It is here that he becomes ever more enthralled with Hitler and grows up, proudly wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth, treating others with great disdain, basking in his self-importance, and then committing a terrible act of betrayal against his aunt. He witnesses vicious acts against Jews, and he hears firsthand of plans for extermination camps. Yet at war’s end he maintains that he was only a child and didn’t really understand. An epilogue has him returning to Paris, where he finds Anshel and begins a kind of catharsis. Boyne includes real Nazi leaders and historical details in his relentless depiction of Pierrot’s inevitable corruption and self-delusion. As with The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2006), readers both need to know what Pierrot disingenuously doesn’t and are expected to accept his extreme naiveté, his total lack of awareness and comprehension in spite of what is right in front of him.
Chilling, difficult, and definitely not for readers without a solid understanding of the Holocaust despite the relatively simple reading level. (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-030-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Smart, nuanced adventure that asks big questions.
Ahoy, mateys! Be ye brave, clever, able to fight crocodiles and willing to eat turtle cooked over an open fire? Then leap into the drink of the next installment of the Dagger Chronicles, if ye dare.
Christopher Quick, called Kitto, has wished all his life he hadn’t been born with a club foot, but when he loses it to the teeth of a shark while saving his friend Van from drowning, he has to adjust to a brand new peg leg. It doesn’t help that he and four others are stranded on an island where the landscape is rough. When a pirate crew lands on the island as well, things get heated, but Kitto finds a solution in the form of a common enemy and ties to the past that are buried deeper than buried treasure. With detailed prose, elementary school teacher Eames relays his characters’ fast-paced adventures with just the right blend of history and excitement. His greatest talent lies in writing action sequences in a way that maintains momentum and delivers information, all with an eye toward historical accuracy. One caveat: It’s best to start with the first book in the series; this story is teeming with complex characters better understood through an extended relationship.
Smart, nuanced adventure that asks big questions. (Adventure. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-6855-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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