An ambitious project effectively executed.
Divakaruni (Queen of Dreams, 2005, etc.) offers a quasi-feminist retelling of the great Hindu text known as the Mahabharata.
Among the world’s longest epic poems and dated to the 5th century BCE, the Mahabharata traces the dynasty of the Pandava brothers, from the circumstances of their birth to the great war fought for the honor of Panchaali to their last days in search of spiritual peace. Gods intervene, divine weapons waylay whole battalions, a fantastical palace inspires a war, yet Divakaruni manages to keep the story human and relevant, also about a woman, her marriage, her mother-in-law. The plot remains essentially true to the original, but here the story is narrated by Panchaali, born out of fire to avenge her father. It is decreed that she will change history, and she certainly begins well when she marries all five of the Pandava brothers (by a strange bit of misunderstanding, the brothers’ mother insists that the brothers must share all of their good fortune). Panchaali becomes queen and builds for herself the Palace of Illusions, the most magnificent dwelling on earth, made of marble and magic. But Panchaali’s worldly triumphs are paired with her spiritual failings: her pride, her need for vengeance and the secret love she holds for Karna, her husbands’ greatest enemy. When her husband Yudhisthir loses their kingdom gambling, Panchaali and her husbands are forced into forest exile for 12 years, and when they re-emerge, they begin the war that will pit all the kings of India against each other, and will fulfill the prophesy of Panchaali’s birth. Throughout the story, there is one constant in Panchaali’s life—the benevolent presence of Krishna, her greatest friend (she vaguely suspects he is divine) and ally. Occasionally the novel falls flat—decades and events flash by with mere mention, one suspects a result of compressing such a rich work into such a small space—but Divakaruni mostly succeeds in creating an intimate, feminine portrait that is both contemporary and timeless.
An ambitious project effectively executed.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-51599-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
With any luck, the Nazi hunting will go on for a sequel or two.
Nazi hunters team up with a former bomber pilot to bring a killer known as the Huntress to justice.
In postwar Europe, Ian, a British war correspondent with a vendetta, and his American sidekick, Tony, have set up a shoestring operation to catch the war criminals who seem to be not just slipping, but swarming through the cracks. The same set of circumstances that led Ian to enter a marriage of convenience with Nina, a Siberian former bomber pilot, has also given both common cause: to chase down Lorelei Vogt, a Nazi known as the Huntress, who, by her lakeside lair in Poland, trapped and killed refugees, many of them children. Lorelei’s mother, blandished by Tony, reveals that her daughter immigrated to Boston. Meanwhile, Jordan, an aspiring photographer living in Boston with her widowed antiques-dealer father, Dan, welcomes a new stepmother, Austrian refugee Anneliese, and her 4-year-old daughter, Ruth. Jordan soon grows suspicious of Dan’s new bride: A candid shot captures Anneliese’s furtive “cruel” glance—and there’s that swastika charm hidden in her wedding bouquet. However, Anneliese manages to quell Jordan’s suspicions by confessing part of the truth: that Ruth is not really her daughter but a war orphan. That Jordan’s suspicions are so easily allayed strains credulity, especially since the reader is almost immediately aware that Anneliese is the Huntress in disguise. The suspense lies in how long it’s going to take Ian and company to track her down and what the impact will be on Jordan and Ruth when they do. Well-researched and vivid segments are interspersed detailing Nina’s backstory as one of Russia’s sizable force of female combat pilots (dubbed The Night Witches by the Germans), establishing her as a fierce yet vulnerable antecedent to Lisbeth Salander. Quinn’s language is evocative of the period, and her characters are good literary company.
With any luck, the Nazi hunting will go on for a sequel or two.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-274037-3
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A moody exploration of bleak wartime Britain.
Healey looks back fondly at the tradition of spooky English country-house fiction while adding a few twists of her own.
With more than a few nods to Jane Eyre and Rebecca, this debut novel throws an awkward but stalwart heroine into a decaying house with history and mystery to spare. Friendless Hetty Cartright has found a home working among the stuffed specimens at a major natural history museum in London. When, in 1939, the museum decides to farm out its collection to houses in the countryside in order to avoid their destruction in the anticipated bombing of the city, Hetty is assigned to guard the stuffed mammals in their temporary home at Lockwood Manor. The decaying manor, ruled by the imperious and lascivious Lord Lockwood, has “four floors, six flights of stairs, and ninety-two rooms,” some with resident ghosts, and Hetty soon has her hands full attempting to protect the animals, some of which disappear and many of which she finds in disconcerting new spots. Scorned by the household staff, Hetty finds an ally in Lord Lockwood's sensitive, unstable daughter, Lucy, who narrates the portions of the novel that Hetty doesn't. As the two become closer and face their individual fears and insecurities, the peril of the house amps up, culminating in a disastrous party. While Healey sometimes lays on the atmospheric menace with a heavy hand, especially considering how light on action the novel actually is, and though she ties up her plot threads in a few hasty pages, her depictions of the historical period and of the dread of anticipating full-scale war are vivid. The animals, frozen in place and unable to defend themselves either against the encroaching Germans or the more immediate dangers of the live animals and insects that want to devour them, mirror the plight of the women caught in Lockwood Manor.
A moody exploration of bleak wartime Britain.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-10640-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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