The peace of 1814 ends the Peninsular Wars with Napoleon's exile to Elba, but doesn't give a moment's rest to Major Richard Sharpe (Sharpe's Eagle, Sharpe's Regiment, etc.). This latest installment of Sharpe's adventures begins just before the savage and unnecessary battle of Toulouse, where Sharpe's friend Major-General Nairn is killed. But the real threat to Sharpe is elsewhere: his archenemy Major Pierre Ducos, realizing that the Emperor's downfall is imminent, has hijacked his personal baggage, including a fortune in gold, and laid a trail incriminating Sharpe. Together with his right-hand man, Sergeant Patrick Harper. and one-eyed, misogynistic Captain William Frederickson, Sharpe escapes from a British tribunal in Bordeaux and goes after priestly Henri Lassan, who can clear his name. But Ducos' men catch up with Lassan first and, disguised as British soldiers, kill him and his mother, leaving his sister Lucille with a murderous thirst for revenge against Sharpe. In the meantime, Sharpe's beautiful wife Jane, armed with a power of attorney and a new-found faith in her ability to charm would-be protectors, has taken control of Sharpe's fortune and fallen in love with Lord John Rossendale; instead of pleading Sharpe's case with the Prince Regent, she's hoping he'll die in France. But all these threats are only a warm-up for the climactic and satisfying meeting between Sharpe and Ducos. As in his last few outings, Sharpe spends more time laying and recovering from plots than bashing the French; but Cornwell handles the transition to peacetime with ample helpings of bloodletting, rousing intrigue, and period detail. A concluding note broadly implies a sequel at Waterloo.
Pub Date: May 18, 1989
ISBN: 0140294384
Page Count: 229
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1989
Fashion lovers will enjoy descriptions of the design of clothing and accessories and the machinations of running fashion...
A widowed American woman navigates the world of fashion in 1938 Paris, getting caught up in the rivalry between two famous designers.
Lily Sutter is teaching art at a girl’s boarding school in England when her brother, Charlie, invites her to Paris. Drowning in the memories of her husband, who died two years earlier, and living in a world of gray, Lily has been unable to paint. Once in Paris and caught up in the glamorous circles of her brother and his married lover, Ania, Lily begins to see the world in color once again and picks up her brushes. The novel is divided into three parts, each section labeled with an oft-referenced primary color meant to symbolize the emotions described within it. The first, blue, is a paradox, representing longing, sadness, joy, and fulfillment. The second, red, is for love, death, and passion. And the last, yellow, is for sunshine, gold, and new beginnings but also warning and fear. Creating a world where fictional and real worlds overlap is tricky, particularly when famous events and people (in this case Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel) are a major part of the narrative. The novel includes as a plot point the reported real-world instance when the rivalry between Chanel and Schiaparelli became physical—accidentally or on purpose—and Chanel caused Schiaparelli’s costume to catch fire at a party. Mackin (A Lady of Good Family, 2015, etc.) goes beyond the facts, however. A substantial portion of the novel is composed of hypothetical interior monologues, thoughts, and motivations of the two real-life fashion icons. Readers interested in historical accuracy may find this distracting.
Fashion lovers will enjoy descriptions of the design of clothing and accessories and the machinations of running fashion houses before World War II.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-99054-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
"I'm Yakov Fixer... I'm the kind of man who finds it perilous to be alive." He is childless, as the Talmud said, alive but dead, and deserted by his wife. He leaves his native shtetl for Kiev to pass for a few months as a goyim. Then he is arrested for having counterfeited a name and is later accused of killing a child in a ritual murder. This is the Russia of Nicholas the Second, the increasing irrationale of anti-Semitism, the prophetic "stink of future evil"— and there seems to be no question that this is Malamud's strongest book. There may be more question whether Yakov is one of his "saint-schlemiehls." He's a simple man, an ignorant man, but he reads a little (Spinoza) and he thinks. Even in his outraged innocence he knows that he is a "rational being and a man must try to reason." During these long months of interrogation and internment, he develops a certain philosophy of his own even though "it's all skin and bones." But speculate as he does, protest as he does, how accept the fact that he is one of the chosen people, chosen to represent the destiny and racial guilt of the Jews? As a Job, and several of Malamud's earlier characters have been termed Jobs, he repudiates suffering and eventually his hate is stronger than his fear... Anticipating all the inevitable comparisons to which the book is equal, Malamud's Fixer, less ideological than Koestler's Darkness at Noon, less symbolic than Kafka's Trial, has elements of each but a more exposed humanity than either of them. It is a work of commanding power.
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1966
ISBN: 1412812585
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1966
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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