More entertainment than history, but all the better for it.
A wish-fulfillment fantasy about another Romanov who survived Ekaterinburg, this time the Tsar’s second daughter, Tatiana.
Forensic science has squelched speculation about whether or not any of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra’s five children escaped assassination by Bolsheviks in 1918. Erickson, who has carved out a niche in the historical genre for what she styles “historical entertainments” (e.g. The Secret Life of Josephine, 2007, etc.), never lets harsh fact impede a good story. Instead of the usual suspect, Anastasia, Erickson’s surviving Grand Duchess is Tatiana (aka Tania), now 93, living in obscurity in the West under the assumed name Daria Gradov. Tania has resolved to tell the world that the Romanov line did not die out. Flashback to pre–World War I St. Petersburg. The increasingly neurasthenic Alexandra has finally produced a male heir, but unfortunately, Tsarevich Alexei is born with hereditary hemophilia. Tania, at first preoccupied with typical princess concerns—French lessons, dancing instruction, ball gowns and draconian posture improvement administered by her overbearing Grandma Minnie—senses that her father’s throne is threatened. An attempt on Nicholas’s life sparked a major riot and Cossack rampage, and her Uncle Gega was blown to bits by a carriage bomb. As war approaches, Alexandra, when she’s not outraging the public with her German nationality and affinity for the rakish faith healer Rasputin, does her patriotic duty. Tania, meanwhile, toils tending wounded soldiers, like young Georgian Michael, whom she cures with Rasputin’s healing stick. Michael, with his Adonis-like physique (except for that nasty chest wound), is this romance’s Fabio. After exchanging identities with servant Daria, who then dies alongside her employers, Tania flees to Canada with Michael. Although the particulars of the Romanovs’ fall are familiar from other treatments, including Erickson’s biography of Alexandra, the suspense never flags, despite many improbabilities.
More entertainment than history, but all the better for it.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36738-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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