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 compulsively readable account of a little-known yet extraordinary historical figure—Lawhon’s best book to date.
A historical novel explores the intersection of love and war in the life of Australian-born World War II heroine Nancy Grace Augusta Wake.
Lawhon’s (I Was Anastasia, 2018, etc.) carefully researched, lively historical novels tend to be founded on a strategic chronological gambit, whether it’s the suspenseful countdown to the landing of the Hindenberg or the tale of a Romanov princess told backward and forward at once. In her fourth novel, she splits the story of the amazing Nancy Wake, woman of many aliases, into two interwoven strands, both told in first-person present. One begins on Feb. 29th, 1944, when Wake, code-named Hélène by the British Special Operations Executive, parachutes into Vichy-controlled France to aid the troops of the Resistance, working with comrades “Hubert” and “Denden”—two of many vividly drawn supporting characters. “I wake just before dawn with a full bladder and the uncomfortable realization that I am surrounded on all sides by two hundred sex-starved Frenchmen,” she says. The second strand starts eight years earlier in Paris, where Wake is launching a career as a freelance journalist, covering early stories of the Nazi rise and learning to drink with the hardcore journos, her purse-pooch Picon in her lap. Though she claims the dog “will be the great love of [her] life,” she is about to meet the hunky Marseille-based industrialist Henri Fiocca, whose dashing courtship involves French 75 cocktails, unexpected appearances, and a drawn-out seduction. As always when going into battle, even the ones with guns and grenades, Nancy says “I wear my favorite armor…red lipstick.” Both strands offer plenty of fireworks and heroism as they converge to explain all. The author begs forgiveness in an informative afterword for all the drinking and swearing. Hey! No apologies necessary!
A compulsively readable account of a little-known yet extraordinary historical figure—Lawhon’s best book to date.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54468-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
An impressive addition to the library of historical fiction on the Civil War, worthy of a place alongside The Killer Angels,...
A thunderous, action-rich first novel of the Civil War, based on historical fact.
Music publisher Hicks treats a long-overlooked episode of the war in this account of the Battle of Franklin, Tenn., which took place in November 1864 near Nashville. As a field hospital is pitched in her field, Carrie McGavock, an iron-spined farm woman and upstanding citizen of the town, takes it upon herself to tend after the Confederate wounded; later, she and her husband will rebury 1,500 of the fallen on their property. Hicks centers much of the story on Carrie, who has seen her own children die of illness and who has endurance in her blood. “I was not a morbid woman,” Carrie allows, “but if death wanted to confront me, well, I would not turn my head. Say what you have to say to me, or leave me alone.” Other figures speak their turn. One is a young Union officer amazed at the brutal and sometimes weird tableaux that unfold before him; as the bullets fly, he pauses before a 12-year-old rebel boy suffocating under the weight of his piled-up dead comrades. “Suffocated. I had never considered the possibility,” young Lt. Stiles sighs. Another is an Arkansas soldier taken prisoner by the Yankees: “I became a prisoner and accepted all the duties of a prisoner just as easily as I’d picked up the damned colors and walked forward to the bulwarks.” Yet another is Nathan Forrest, who would strike fear in many a heart as a Confederate cavalryman, and later as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Hicks renders each of these figures with much attention to historical detail and a refreshing lack of genre cliché, closing with a subtle lament for the destruction of history before the bulldozer: “One longs to know that some things don’t change, that some of us will not be forgotten, that our perambulations upon the earth are not without point or destination.”
An impressive addition to the library of historical fiction on the Civil War, worthy of a place alongside The Killer Angels, Rifles for Watie and Shiloh.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-446-50012-7
Page Count: 404
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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