An information-packed but flawed novel of World War I.
This encyclopedic debut novel looks at the early months of World War I, as its initial, optimistic hopes for a quick conclusion devolve into dreary reality.
Smith tells his tale through the experiences of nine people—German, French, British and American—who find themselves thrust into “The Great War.” The most winning character is Gordon Graham, an African-American from Dayton, Ohio, who, after being rejected by a U.S. Army recruiter, moves to France to join the French Foreign Legion in hopes of fulfilling his dream of becoming a pilot. He and other soldiers in the trenches experience the physical and emotional devastation of war. At one point, an English infantryman describes an artillery attack: “When the house blew apart, Vernon saw the front door fly from its hinges and strike the old lady’s back. It cut her in half.” Smith’s characters draw readers in as they quickly realize that they’re pawns in their leaders’ war, and become disillusioned by all the death and destruction. Overall, this novel is very well-researched. However, that fact is a double-edged sword, especially in the book’s first half, as the plot and characters get buried in lengthy descriptions of the minutia of military structure, weaponry and uniforms: “Their wool tunics were almost entirely gray, save for thin red piping down the front opening, around the collars and sleeve cuffs and a red crown and W (for Wilhelm) monogrammed on their shoulder straps”—and that’s but one sentence of a two-paragraph description. Such detail is important in historical fiction, but not to the detriment of the work as a whole. Also, as this is the first of a series, the engaging characters’ stories lack closure, and are frustratingly cut off in midstream.
An information-packed but flawed novel of World War I.Pub Date: March 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494236007
Page Count: 650
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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