A lively work that explores a transformative time in a tumultuous place.
Robbins presents a historical novel about the formation of Israel.
During World War II, Vincenz “Vince” Haas is a reporter from Brooklyn embedded with the U.S. 3rd Army in Europe in 1945. As American forces liberate Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp, Vince meets prisoner Hugo Ungar, who once worked as a plumber in Leipzig. As Hugo regains his strength and comes to terms with his situation, he decides to head to Palestine and encourages Vince to go with him. The decision is easy for Vince, as there will be plenty to report on in the Middle East, but the journey is anything but simple. Robbins also relates the story of a young woman named Éva,who will later take the name Rivkah Gellerman, who made the trip to Palestine from Vienna in 1940. As her boat, which had been stopped by the British, waited in Haifa’s harbor, a ship called the Patria exploded nearby—the first of many explosions to come. Paramilitary groups, such as the Irgun, will stop at nothing to create a Jewish state; Arab fighters in the region will do anything to stop them; and many rank-and-file British soldiers just want to return to their own homes. The British eventually give up control of Palestine, but it’s only the beginning of the region’s story. Robbins’ telling makes effective use of real events, such as the bombing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946 and the execution of Zionist activist Dov Gruner by the British in 1947. The narrative not only incorporates detailed accounts of these happenings, but also deeply explores the motivations of the many people involved in them. Indeed, the book manages to fit in a great deal of history in fewer than 600 pages, although some repetition could have been excised. For instance, Hugo explains to multiple people, multiple times, that he was once a plumber—a detail that has little relevance to the plot. Still, as the main players fight, bleed, and try to make sense of the world, the narrative successfully carries readers right along with them.
A lively work that explores a transformative time in a tumultuous place.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64293-829-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Wicked Son
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2021
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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