Promises to be an intriguing saga, both in print and eventually, perhaps, on Masterpiece.
A Swedish heiress is ensnared by the aristocracy she tried to renounce in this novel by bestselling German author Bomann.
It’s 1913, and Agneta, daughter of Count Thure Lejongård of Lion Hall, having legally emancipated herself from her family, is pursuing the bohemian life as a painter and art student in Stockholm. She’s also, along with best friend Marit, an ardent activist for women’s rights, including the vote. (The translation from the original German opts for the outmoded term suffragette.) A telegram from home puts an end to this free-wheeling lifestyle. Her father and his male heir apparent, Agneta’s beloved brother, Hendrik, have died by fire while rescuing Lion Hall’s herd of valuable horses from a burning stable. Her mother, Stella, at first proves vindictive when Agneta assumes, reluctantly, the title of Countess and Mistress of Lion Hall. From here, the action is agonizingly slow, not helped by the competent but stilted translation. Although the narration is in first person, Agneta always seems to be regarding herself at a distance. The leisurely exposition, though frustrating, is not surprising since this is the first book of a trilogy. Agneta investigates a puzzling debt left by her father and wins her mother’s grudging and intermittent trust. Under Agneta’s control, Lion Hall maintains its close ties to the royal family, once the royals are reassured arson will not reoccur on their next visit. Agneta rejects an advantageous proposal from her childhood friend Lennard Ekberg, himself heir to a grand estate. She is holding out for a love match. Her first true love, fellow artist Michael, disdained marrying into the aristocracy, but now Agneta’s affections are ripe for trifling with by her estate manager, Max, landless younger son of German nobles. World War I has ignited, and we are well into spoiler territory by the time anything truly momentous happens. But happen it will. Suffice it to say that the Lejongård line continues, buffeted by misfortune and encroaching modernity. Stay tuned for Volume 2.
Promises to be an intriguing saga, both in print and eventually, perhaps, on Masterpiece.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1684-1
Page Count: 527
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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