A meticulous and vivid chronicle.
Thomas’ latest (Farewell, My Queen, 2003, etc.) illuminates an obscure corner of Western European royal history: the bartering of child brides and grooms.
In 1721, Mariana Victoria, the 3-year-old infanta of Spain, is married by proxy to King Louis XV of France, then only 11. The two are first cousins, descendants of the Spanish and French branches of the Bourbon dynasty. Mariana Victoria, with her cherished Carmen-Doll and a magnificent entourage, journeys to France, where she will live at various royal palaces (Versailles is her least favorite). The architect of this union, the Duc D’Orléans, Louis' uncle and regent until the king attains majority at 13, has sweetened the deal by adding his own daughter, Louise Élisabeth, to the mix—she is sent to Spain to marry her second cousin Don Luis the Prince of Asturia, Mariana's half brother and heir to the Spanish throne. Louise is 12, Don Luis, 14. Thomas skillfully extracts dramatic moments from the ponderous mechanics of nuptial diplomacy. On arrival in Spain, the French ambassador, Saint-Simon, gets lost in Alcázar, the mazelike royal palace of King Philip V, and detests Spain’s pervasive “[stink] of olive oil.” On Pheasant Island in the river Bidasoa, the princesses meet while crossing the border in opposite directions. Mariana finds an unlikely mentor in the shrewd, 70-year-old Princess Palatine, the regent's mother. Even more than most royal arranged marriages, these two unions seem doomed from the start. Not only must consummation of Louis and Mariana's marriage be put off for several years, threatening the succession (which is one reason D’Orléans, next in line for the throne, favored the match), but Louis prefers men anyway. Louise also prefers her own sex and has physical and mental health issues, including an exhibitionist streak. The infanta, though articulate beyond her years, seems to have stopped growing. Although the narrative pace is that of an intricate multipanel tapestry, the characters are brought to life in all their frailty. Cullen’s translation ably mirrors Thomas’ arch, scandalmongering style.
A meticulous and vivid chronicle.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59051-702-4
Page Count: 329
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.
Tremendous in scope—tremendous in depth of penetration—and as different a Steinbeck as the Steinbeck of Burning Bright was from the Steinbeck of The Grapes of Wrath.
Here is no saga of the underprivileged—no drama of social significance. Tenderness, which some felt was inherent in everything Steinbeck wrote, is muted almost to the vanishing point in this story of conflict within character, impact of character on character, of circumstances on personalities, of the difficult acceptance of individual choice as against the dominance of inherited traits. The philosophy is intimately interwoven with the pace of story, as he follows-from New England to California over some fifty odd years-the two families which hold stage center. There are the Trasks, brothers in two generations, strangely linked, strangely at war the one with the other; there are the Hamiltons (John Steinbeck's own forebears), a unique Irish born couple, the man an odd lovable sort of genius who never capitalizes on his ideas for himself, the tiny wife, tart, cold-and revealing now and again unexpected gentleness of spirit, the burgeoning family, as varied a tribe as could be found. And- on the periphery but integral to the deepening philosophy which motivates the story, there is the wise Chinese servant scholar and gentleman, who submerges his own goals to identify himself wholly with the needs of the desolate Adam Trask, crushed by his soulless wife's desertion, and the twin boys, Cal, violent, moody, basically strong enough to be himself—and Aron, gentle, unwilling to face disagreeable facts, beloved by all who met him. In counterpoint, the story follows too the murky career of Adam's wife, Cathy—who came to him from a mysteriously clouded past, and returned to a role for which she was suited—as a costly whore, and later as Madame in Salinas most corrupt "house," where the perversions of sex ridden males were catered to—and cruelty capitalized upon.Shock techniques applied with rapier and not bludgeon will rule the book out for the tender-skinned.
But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1952
ISBN: 0142004235
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1952
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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