Less compelling on Shakespeare himself than on his age; but in its evocation of the laissez-faire sexual and economic mores...
Cook (The Sidewalk Hilton, 1994, etc.; a.k.a. Bruce Alexander) lends his mystery skills to this self-portrait of a callow, bisexual, slightly homicidal young Shakespeare as an eager ingénue who manages to better himself without caring overmuch about those who fall by the wayside.
Things start with Will chatting away in his old age (52), prosperous and bored in Stratford, troubled only by an old village biddy. Speaking in an uninflected, unintrospective voice devoid of the brilliance and fury of the Bard, Old Will traces Young Will’s departure from sleepy Stratford after a dalliance with a male schoolteacher and an accidental-on-purpose pushing of his best friend into a raging river during an argument. Untroubled by conscience, though he is a closet Catholic, Will does hack work for a traveling troupe, hits London as a player with a knack for words and for finding patrons, falls in love with Christopher Marlowe, even moves in with him (and also steals characters from him—best here is the portrait of Will and Kit as young sodomites who, when they aren’t buggering or boozing, write and bluster in the same room). Will experiences the great events of his time—court intrigues, the Spanish Armada, persecution of Catholics, plague, the competition and growth of theater companies, even the murder of Marlowe (Will himself wields the dagger in this version)—all in a sort of absent-minded monotone that successfully humanizes the mysterious and elusive figure yet makes it impossible to associate him with the glories of Elizabethan English. That may actually have been Cook’s plan—to show Will as a vessel or conduit of his experiences—but the device leaves a dull and disappointing aftertaste.
Less compelling on Shakespeare himself than on his age; but in its evocation of the laissez-faire sexual and economic mores of Elizabethan society, Cook’s tale has the ring of psychological truth.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-33573-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Truman Talley/St. Martin’s
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
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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