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DEATH OF KINGS

The surprise is that Cornwell’s love scenes are as deft as his action scenes, though far fewer, of course—all driven by a...

It’s 898, and life in pre-England is messy, turbulent, quite likely to be short and vividly evoked in Cornwell’s masterful 46th novel (The Burning Land, 2010, etc.).

“ ‘I hate peace,’ ” snarls old soldier Uhtred, who regards periods of relative tranquility—not that these abound in his embattled land—as opportunities for his enemies to mount conspiracies against him and, by extension, King Alfred of Wessex, to whom he has sworn allegiance. Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg: clever, resourceful, intemperate, charming, feared by most men and adored by too many women. In tribute to his generalship and the unparalleled success he’s had in repelling invasions through the years, the ever-marauding Danes refer to him bleakly as the Sword of the Saxons. It’s King Alfred’s cherished dream to reshape an unruly collection of tribes into a thing called England. He wants it to be Christian and cohesive enough to drive the Danes back into the sea once and for all. The Christian part is what Uhtred is out of sympathy with. In his view the new religion replaces joy with hypocrisy, a bad bargain, he thinks. Uhtred prefers the old ways when the proper blood sacrifice could propitiate essentially undemanding gods and tip a teetering battle toward victory. But now Alfred’s reign is in its final stages and no one, Uhtred included, can quite figure the geopolitical implications of the aftermath. All agree, however, that it will be unsettled. Worried about the succession, Alfred asks Uhtred to transfer his allegiance to his son Edward, and Uhtred agrees, albeit reluctantly—Edward is no Alfred. The great King dies, smoldering grudges ignite, alliances shift, armies clash and Uhtred is once again a happy warrior.

The surprise is that Cornwell’s love scenes are as deft as his action scenes, though far fewer, of course—all driven by a hard-shelled, sporadically soft-hearted, always charismatic protagonist: George Clooney alert.

Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-06-196965-2

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012

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RULES OF CIVILITY

An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.

Manhattan in the late 1930s is the setting for this saga of a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they meet in a jazz club are never the same after an auto accident.

Towles' buzzed-about first novel is an affectionate return to the post–Jazz Age years, and the literary style that grew out of it (though seasoned with expletives). Brooklyn girl Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse mate, Midwestern beauty Eve Ross, are expert flirts who become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker Tinker Grey. With him, they hit all the hot nightspots and consume much alcohol. After a milk truck mauls his roadster with the women in it, permanently scarring Eve, the guilt-ridden Tinker devotes himself to her, though he and she both know he has stronger feelings for Katey. Strong-willed Katey works her way up the career ladder, from secretarial job on Wall Street to publisher’s assistant at Condé Nast, forging friendships with society types and not allowing social niceties to stand in her way. Eve and Tinker grow apart, and then Kate, belatedly seeing Tinker for what he is, sadly gives up on him. Named after George Washington's book of moral and social codes, this novel documents with breezy intelligence and impeccable reserve the machinations of wealth and power at an historical moment that in some ways seems not so different from the current one. Tinker, echoing Gatsby, is permanently adrift. The novel is a bit light on plot, relying perhaps too much on description. But the characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is sharp and Towles avoids the period nostalgia and sentimentality to which a lesser writer might succumb.

An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.

Pub Date: July 25, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-670-02269-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011

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THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ

The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...

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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.

Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.

The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018

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