While not having the epic scope of Shogun, Kirk’s novel is sure to be compared to Clavell’s work in its superb depiction of...
Kirk presents 17th-century Japan as a world imbued with stately rituals, unshakable principles and a rigid moral code.
Munisai Shinmen has faced an implacable enemy and has emerged with both body and honor intact, so his training as a samurai has served him well. Shortly after the first battle Kirk depicts, we get a sense of how the culture of honor operates when Lord Kanno, the defeated enemy, plaintively asks how to commit seppuku, for he doesn’t know how it’s done and he wishes to die an honorable death—he’s 9 years old. Violence is not confined to the battlefield, however, for an enraged Munisai has also killed his wife and her lover. Munisai eventually goes back to reclaim his young son, Bennosuke, whom he left eight years before in the care of Munisai’s brother Dorinbo, a Shinto monk. Though injured, Munisai takes over his son’s training, and the youngster (he’s only 13) begins to realize his promise as a future samurai when he defeats Kihei Arima (aka “Lightning Hand”), who’s already killed six men in single combat and is eager to add a seventh. Issues of honor re-emerge when Munisai presents himself to his lord, Hideie Ukita, to commit seppuku for one of Bennosuke’s transgressions. Kirk instills the ritual with great dignity as Munisai commits the ultimate act to “expunge all shame.” Bennosuke then continues to confirm his stance as a celebrated samurai by participating in the battle of Sekigahara and claiming a “new” identity as Musashi Miyamoto, one of the most renowned swordsmen in samurai history.
While not having the epic scope of Shogun, Kirk’s novel is sure to be compared to Clavell’s work in its superb depiction of samurai culture.Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-53663-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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