Excellent, descriptive storytelling rooted in history and legend.
A novel explores the life of Lady Godiva and the tale of her famous ride through Coventry, England.
Godgyfu, a young woman who will eventually be known as Lady Godiva, is on her deathbed in Coventry in 1028. As she is being given last rites, she prays to St. Osburh, promising to dedicate her life to the holy figure if she survives. Later, in 1041, Godgyfu lives in Coventry and is married to Earl Leofric. She spends much of her time praising the Christian God and overseeing the construction of a new abbey for Benedictine monks. Godgyfu is also relentlessly pursued by Thomas, a Benedictine novice, who believes she is the manifestation of the pagan goddess Rhiannon. As she gets to know him, Godgyfu finds her sexual desire newly awakened by Thomas and falls in love with him. Leofric has also discovered a new sexual proclivity of his own that entails voyeurism and exhibitionism. When he catches Thomas spying on Godgyfu bathing one day, Leofric is offended—but it also ignites a spark inside him. The two men reach an agreement: Thomas is permitted to keep watching and meeting with Godgyfu. His mission is to show her the goddess within her, culminating in her fabled naked horse ride. In this swiftly paced tale, Cevasco deftly blends the Lady Godiva legend with Middle Ages history. This is particularly evidenced in Leofric’s dealings with the English monarchy as well as in the brutality highlighted in various scenes. Readers uninterested in medieval politics and Old English spellings will still find plenty to savor here. Thomas may be a slimeball cloaked in the attractive guise of goddess worship and herbalism, but moments between him and Godgyfu remain thrilling, mostly due to the overwhelming nature of her desire. Moreover, Godgyfu is an engaging, driven character who has no issues with expressing herself, whether encouraging her husband to speak to the king about taxes or being proactive in her lust for Thomas. Later, looking at Leofric, a world-weary Godgyfu comes to a sage realization: “She could not help but wonder why…she had ever felt she’d needed” men in her life “to make herself whole. She was stronger than any one of them and now thought of them all as sorry, almost laughable oafs.”
Excellent, descriptive storytelling rooted in history and legend.Pub Date: April 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-59021-714-6
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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
© 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.
