An intriguing story, despite some bland characterizations, with a colorful historical backdrop.
Maring’s (The Mullahs, 2012, etc.) first historical novel in a planned trilogy is an ambitious, imaginative account of tribes and settlers on the South Carolina coast.
After a modern-day archaeologist finds a Viking artifact on the bluffs of the Waccamaw River, wheels are set in motion for a twisting, multifaceted tale set in a beautiful coastal region in what is now the American South. The story flashes back to the year 1200: A young maiden, Ingri, is infatuated with Viking sailor Baldar, so she sneaks onto his merchant ship, which is headed for the Norwegian coast. The two eventually marry, and after a harrowing series of events, including storms at sea, the ship ends up in Winyah Bay in the new world. Once on shore, the settlers meet the Winyah tribe, and they soon learn each other’s language and forge alliances. The white people eventually intermarry with the Winyah, creating a new tribe of natives, including some with light skin and reddish hair. Maring’s prose is smooth, but his cast of characters is dizzying, as many quickly come and go—including the Welsh addition to the gene pool, a woman named Ava, who marries Baldar’s son, Kendar. Spaniards arrive later, under the leadership of Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon. The book has no sole protagonist, but there are some compelling characters, such as a Winyah slave, Francisco Chicora, who’s paraded through Spain as a “savage” before Lucas Vazquez helps him attain freedom and return home. Another strong character is an African slave, Sepo, who attempts to defend herself from rape by stabbing a slave captain with a letter opener. Unfortunately, her role is minor, and most of the story’s other females are one-dimensional, beautiful maidens. By the book’s conclusion in 1679, some characters are long forgotten. Overall, however, readers will likely enjoy Maring’s portraits of adventure on the high seas and struggles to survive in a new world.
An intriguing story, despite some bland characterizations, with a colorful historical backdrop.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484882603
Page Count: 246
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2014
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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