The drama of embattled faith that makes up his preoccupying theme takes one of its most unusual and interesting forms so far in this impressive new work from the Canadian author whose long career has recently peaked with such compact and well-crafted novels as No Other Life (1992) and The Statement (1996). Moore's latest is set in mid-19th century France and Algeria, its rather remarkably varied actions seen through the eyes of Emmeline Lambert, the country-bred (though in no sense ignorant) young wife of Parisian ``illusionist'' Henri Lambert, a magician of such renown that he and his spouse are invited to join a weeklong party at Compiägne, the rural estate of Emperor Napoleon III. Emmeline's initial reluctance to attend yields to even more troubled feelings when the casual amorality and bloodthirsty ``sport'' indulged in by her aristocratic fellow guests reveal their shallowness, and when she learns that Henri will be commanded to display his powers before the Arab rulers of Algeria, a territory the powerful Emperor hungrily covets. Emmeline dutifully accompanies Henri to that strange new land, and, as her mistrust of her country's, and Henri's, benevolence deepens, she simultaneously becomes drawn toward the Arabs' culture and moved by the simplicity and selflessness of their faith (``All they ask is God's help to guide them in the right path. Isn't that what all of us should ask?''). Emmeline's open rebellion against her husband's duplicity is perhaps the only false step in a superbly constructed story that offers both an ingeniously managed plot and thoughtfully detailed portrayals of two remote, and utterly different, civilizations, all in fewer than two hundred and fifty pages. Surrendering to the spell of Moore at the top of his game is like watching a master illusionist at work. Few of his more celebrated contemporaries come even near him as a pure storyteller. The Magicians' Wife is another triumph. (Literary Guild Selection)
Pub Date: Jan. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-525-94400-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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