A historical thriller, courtesy of Irish novelist GÇbler (W9 & Other Lives, 1998, etc.), on the travails of a 19th-century land agent who runs afoul of a gang of Irish terrorists. The landlord’s lot may be a fairly easy one, but no one in his right mind would envy the rent collector. The hero of our tale is one Thomas French, appointed agent of the Beaton estate in County Monaghan in 1854. The Beatons are absentee landlords, Anglo-Irish Protestants who hardly ever leave Dublin and haven—t lived on the estate for generations. They have good cause: A secret society called the Ribbonmen has been repaying evictions with assassinations ever since the Beatons received the estate in the 17th century. The Ribbonmen inspire such fear that almost no rents have been collected on the estate for years, and the previous agent gave up even trying to put things in order. But French has some ideas. He decides to clear the air by forgiving tenants— arrears if they agree to accept passage to America and emigrate, thereby making room for more agreeable newcomers. The Ribbonmen don—t like this offer, however, suspecting that it’s a means of clearing the area of Catholics and solidifying British control. One of the gang’s ringleaders, Isaac Marron, convinces his cohorts to issue a —death warrant— for the agent, and in accordance with custom French is sent an anonymous warning. This also proves to be a mistake: French becomes all the more determined to carry out his plan now that he’s facing an outright rebellion. With his faithful assistant Micky Laffin—and no one else—at his side as he faces the outlaws, French acts more like a Colorado sheriff than a Monaghan estate agent, though perhaps that was the author’s intent. Formulaic and uninspired but, still, with enough atmosphere to satisfy Celtophiles of all stripes—provided they like westerns.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7145-3058-1
Page Count: 373
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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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