A promising espionage novel that suffers from its own self-seriousness.
A spy with a difficult past finds love in Fewston’s second espionage novel in a series.
According to a 30-something American by the name of John Lockwood, everyone living in East Berlin in 1975 could be summed up in just a sentence or two—“and they were, by the Stasi.” John’s come to the Communist region to do some spying of his own, although he keeps his objectives close to the vest, even from the reader. Using the name Jacob Miller, he’s on the trail of the shadowy Heads of Leonidas, a covert organization he’s been tracking since he was in Tehran. Now he’s in a divided city at the center of the Cold War, and his task is a lonely one: He watches people from a distance, but his personal interactions are mostly limited to other spies with suspect motivations. Then he meets two people who seem especially interested in him. The first is his 20-year-old neighbor, Nina Rosenberg, who manages to talk her way into his apartment shortly after a dead body is found in the neighborhood. The other is a philosophical old man named Zehrfeld who reveals himself to know far more about John’s past than any stranger should. Nina is boldly critical of East Germany—she blames the government for both her parents’ deaths—and she shares John’s tastes in literature. She also promises to inject some passion into his life, but she’s much younger than he is, and he’s reluctant to drag her into his dangerous world; meanwhile, Zehrfeld is angling to make a deal with John—and when it comes to both love and spycraft, John has trouble saying no.
Despite its status as a sequel (with a third novel planned), this tale of John’s East Berlin mission works rather well as a stand-alone tale. Memories of John’s previous adventures occasionally intrude on the present-day action, but far less so than one might expect. Overall, this is a mood piece with limited fixations, and as such, it delivers more than the usual cloak-and-dagger intrigue of thrillers set during the Cold War. However, the novel is poorly served by Fewston’s prose, which often comes across as excessively melodramatic, as in this passage, in which John describes his first night with Nina: “Like the gods who forgot they had lived, Nina and I talked late into the night. When it started raining around two in the morning, I should’ve known then the rain was a portent of things to come.” And although Fewston resists spy-novel clichés in other areas, several characters frustratingly talk as if they’re auditioning for a James Bond film, as when one says, “I’ve always admired Faust. At least he had ambition, a vision, a goal.” (There are several more references to Goethe’s classic story over the course of the novel.) The plot ultimately descends into similar theatricality, and the ending is unsatisfying—and despite the frequent literary allusions and philosophical tête-à-têtes, the novel leaves readers with disappointingly little to think about.
A promising espionage novel that suffers from its own self-seriousness.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-4924-3658-2
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
