An absorbing and fast-paced novel of war, romance, and espionage in WWII-era Indonesia.
In Putterman and Ishak’s historical novel, an ambitious man strives to make a fortune in colonial Indonesia.
In 1937, Avram Shabbes, a Jewish Pole of modest background, is building a life in Batavia (later Jakarta), a city of smugglers, thieves, spies, and concubines. He has a sharp eye for opportunity and, unlike many other Europeans, respects the Indonesians; he’s learned the local language, which helps him build a shipping operation that enjoys great success—until the Japanese conquest. Meanwhile, at home in Poland, Avram’s family waits for him to pay their passage overseas. By the time he realizes the extent of the horror in Europe, it’s too late to save them—instead, Avram pours all of his cunning and resources into staying alive in occupied Indonesia, working for the Japanese and Germans to stay out of internment camps. His native wife, Sarinah, is a militant nationalist, convinced by a prophecy that the Japanese will be the route to independence (“they are coming to liberate us from the Belandas,” she says, referring to the Dutch). Avram’s chance for redemption comes when he’s recruited into a spy ring, using his chummy rapport with German seamen to extract information. As more atrocities come to light, the couple undertake dangerous espionage missions to save themselves and help win the war. This is an inventive spin on both the immigrant story and the Holocaust narrative. The atmosphere of a mid-20th-century colonial outpost is palpable, evoking the environment of European racism and oppression in the East Indies. Avram is an everyman but also an outsider, and his in-between status is a clever device that the authors capably use to interrogate social norms and assumptions. Avram is often a slave to circumstance, but he proves himself to be a resourceful and motivated survivor and a complex, flawed hero. His compelling journey poses complicated questions about what is ethically permissible and when the ends justify the means.
An absorbing and fast-paced novel of war, romance, and espionage in WWII-era Indonesia.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
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