A robust, entrancing debut.
In this debut novel, a woman undertakes a road trip around France in an attempt to shed light on her family’s mysterious, troubled past.
In 2001, Sophie Zabél Sullivan, a Frenchwoman living in California, gets word that her mother, Marcelle, is near death. Upon arriving back in France, Sophie only has a few moments with her mother, who encourages her to seek out the identity of her grandfather—the father that Marcelle never knew. However, this is far from the only mystery in the family: Sophie’s two brothers, Thierry and Gérard, were both born out of wedlock during the World War II era. Sophie, meanwhile, is haunted by a sexual assault that she suffered at the hands of an elderly relative, suffers from depression, and is troubled by a recurring nightmare she doesn’t understand. Aided by her American friend, Kate, and using some of her mother’s old journals and family correspondence, she traverses France, interviewing family members and old acquaintances, looking for the answers that she and her siblings need in order to heal. As this multigenerational family saga of war, violence, and betrayal plays itself out, the two friends offer each other emotional support, and the trip proves cathartic for all involved. Along the way, the friends indulge in the French foodie obsessions that first brought them together while also taking in the history and folklore of the regions they visit. Bumpus does a remarkable job of capturing the nuances of the French landscapes and culture and of evoking the wartime occupation of France (“Beaten-down women with exhaustion etched into their eyes carried infants swaddled in mud and blood-spattered blankets”). Although the narrative can be a bit sentimental at times—even inducing compassion fatigue on occasion—Bumpus still manages time and again to strike at the emotional hearts of her characters to reveal their weaknesses and niggling vulnerabilities, as when Kate meets the grown daughter she gave up for adoption and later worries that she might have been disappointed with Kate’s weight.
A robust, entrancing debut.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-938314-90-2
Page Count: 322
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.
Based on an actual incident in Nazi-occupied Belgium, Ramzipoor’s debut is a tragicomic account of fake news for a cause.
Structured like a heist movie, the novel follows several members of a conspiracy in Enghien, Belgium, who have a daring plan. The conspirators do not intend to survive this caper, only to bring some humor—and encouragement for resisters—into the grim existence of Belgians under Nazi rule. To this end, the plotters—among them Marc Aubrion, a journalist and comic; David Spiegelman, an expert forger; Lada Tarcovich, a smuggler and sex worker; and Gamin, a girl masquerading as a male street urchin—intend to...publish a newspaper. And only one issue of a newspaper, to be substituted on one night for the regular evening paper, Le Soir, which has become a mouthpiece for Nazi disinformation. Le Faux Soir, as the changeling paper is appropriately dubbed, will feature satire, doctored photographs making fun of Hitler, and wry requests for a long-overdue Allied invasion. (Target press date: Nov. 11, 1943.) To avoid immediate capture, the Faux Soir staff must act as double agents, convincing (or maybe not) the local Nazi commandant, August Wolff, that they are actually putting out an anti-Allies “propaganda bomb.” The challenge of fleshing out and differentiating so many colorful characters, combined with the sheer logistics of acquiring paper, ink, money, facilities, etc. under the Gestapo’s nose, makes for an excruciatingly slow exposé of how this sausage will be made. The banter here, reminiscent of the better Ocean’s Eleven sequels, keeps the mechanism well oiled, but it is still creaky. A few scenes amply illustrate the brutality of the Occupation, and sexual orientation works its way in: Lada is a lesbian and David, in addition to being a Jew, is gay—August Wolff’s closeted desire may be the only reason David has, so far, escaped the camps. The genuine pathos at the end of this overdetermined rainbow may be worth the wait.
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0815-7
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A compelling, beautifully rendered tale of passion and pain.
Rome, past and present, serves as the setting for a sparkling historical novel.
Smith (Free Men, 2016, etc.) bounds through 2,000 years of history, following four indelible characters as they grapple with questions of faith, freedom, and transgressive love. Tom, a biologist working in contemporary Rome, is studying ostracods, tiny crustaceans that thrive in polluted, agitated environments. “Are they adapting in the face of disadvantage or are they opportunists of collapse?” Tom asks, aware that his question about ostracods could just as well apply to his own emotional agitation. The married father of a 9-year-old daughter, he has met a young woman who enchants him, impelling him to confront his desperate desire for “an unleashing” and for a love deeper than what he feels for his wife. A child playing in the water where he is investigating suddenly shrieks in pain, pierced by a piece of bent metal, “scaly with corrosion, its silver marred with patches of orange rust.” It is a fishhook—maybe a castoff with no value or perhaps an ancient relic: uncanny, miraculous. The fishhook reappears as Smith leaps back to the Renaissance, where it falls into the hands of Giulia, a mixed-race princess newly married to a Medici, pregnant with another man’s child. For Giulia, her fortunes embroiled in political and religious rivalries, the fishhook evokes a holier time, before corruption and hypocrisy sullied the church. In ninth-century Rome, Felix, a 60-year-old monk, is tormented by his youthful, forbidden love for Tomaso; assigned to watch over the decaying bodies in the putridarium, Felix comes into possession of the fishhook, guessing—wishing—that it belonged to the martyred St. Prisca, who perhaps “got it direct from Jesus.” In the year 165, Prisca did indeed find the hook, secreting it as a precious token. Drawn to worshipping Christ rather than pagan gods, 12-year-old Prisca stands defiant against her violent tormenters. Perhaps Smith’s most appealing character is Satan, whose weary, ironic comments punctuate a narrative that shines with lyrical, translucent prose.
A compelling, beautifully rendered tale of passion and pain.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-287364-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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