Eloquent tales that skillfully tap into a deep well of ideas.
This debut collection of fairy tales tells lyrical stories of loss and grief transformed through the power of compassion.
In the title story, a princess must sing so a man will fall in love with her, but she realizes that she can’t. Fearing she has no heart and will never know love, she leaves home. On her journey, the Frog King, the Snake Queen, and the Wolf King teach her to sing by croaking, hissing, and howling. She meets a singing young man who reassures her that “there is nothing wrong with you. You are perfect as you are,” but she doesn’t believe him. A cruel wizard bars her path because it’s prophesied that “a princess with four voices will destroy me and free the prince whom I have been holding prisoner.” Nevertheless, two birds teach her the fourth voice: shrill and shrieking bird song. Before surrendering the prince, the wizard poses four riddles to the princess. The answers reveal the wizard’s past, how he became evil, why he enjoys being wicked, and his path toward redemption. In “The Yellow Bird,” a boy follows and then becomes one with a small yellow bird, forgetting his human self. He helps a king mourning his son to discover the purpose of life, which is “to love and comfort others on their journeys.” In “The Woodcutter’s Daughter,” an older mother rabbit gives a young woman the power to hear her angry, brutish father’s true yearning for love. But the woman can’t save him, so she journeys to offer her love to the wider world. She’s given the task of filling a lake with healing water, which gives new life to many. Her father’s heart, too, is freed. In another tale, a childless older fisherman catches “The Joyfish,” which gladly allows itself to be eaten. The man and his wife are taken to an undersea kingdom where they are magically renewed.
In her book, Cardamon achieves an authentic and pleasing fairy-tale cadence, as in the opening line of the title story: “Once upon a time, when wishing still mattered, a princess lived in a land neither here nor there.” Elements such as the quest motif, animal helpers, and special tasks and characters like the princess and the woodcutter also give the tales a solid grounding in tradition. More contemporary are the stories’ themes of discovering redemption and purpose through love for everyone, even villains like the wizard and the woodcutter; there’s no typical fairy-tale revenge ending. This could seem unfitting, but the author makes it work by staying true to the worlds of the stories and the symbolic imagery. The woodcutter, for example, dies (in one sense) beneath a beautiful magic tree that grew from the buried eyes, tongue, and heart of the mother rabbit, who sacrificed herself to save the man’s daughter. But in another sense, he is asleep, dreaming of finding peace. Although the well-written collection has lessons to teach, they aren’t didactic among so much magic. While “The Princess Who Sang Like a Frog” meanders somewhat, the other offerings are more focused.
Eloquent tales that skillfully tap into a deep well of ideas.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-578-96548-2
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Sublimatio Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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