This rollicking romp seamlessly blends characters, history, and adventure into an enjoyable read.
One of America’s greatest tinkerers learns that not all inventions are good ideas.
If an author is going to write a speculative novel, why not start with a folk hero like Thomas Alva Edison, who contributed so much to modern life? Church’s tale begins in 1887, when Edison is inspired to create an unusual invention after attending—with Mark Twain—a séance by the psychic Madame Blavatsky. The story then jumps ahead to 1918 during World War I. Edison has asked his assistant, John Dawkins, to direct a movie in New Jersey featuring Ziegfeld star Emily Auburn and music by her young accompanist, George Gershwin. The production is attacked by Germans on a military mission. Edison tells John that the Germans are “spies” who want “to sabotage my greatest invention.” The Germans later destroy Edison’s resurrector, a device that communicates with the dead. Seeking to escape the Germans, Edison and his party flee to his secret lab in a Seminole village in Florida, where he keeps a second copy of the resurrector. They are captured by a U-boat while attempting to outrun the Germans on Edison’s electric launch. They are taken to Germany, where they discover that a spy inside Edison’s company has built a deficient version of the resurrector, which the inventor is now expected to fix. The group must find a way to escape and warn some newly arrived American troops of a planned German ambush. Like Emily, Church delightfully sings in this rip-roaring novel. He artfully weaves together real-life characters like Edison and Gershwin with fictional ones, including John and Emily, to create a gripping adventure. The author utilizes Edison’s longtime passion for creating a machine that talks with the dead, placing it at the heart of this story. Lending an authenticity to the backdrop of the caper are Edison’s inventions, both successes and failures. With the exception of the wily inventor, the main characters undergo transformations during the turmoil. Church has even introduced a romance between John and Emily, which becomes the primary motivation for both players. The German officers are predictably venal but distinctive. Following a tragic twist, the book’s conclusion still points toward a hopeful future.
This rollicking romp seamlessly blends characters, history, and adventure into an enjoyable read.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-32484-5
Page Count: 331
Publisher: Ferrisville Publications
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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