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AT THE FULL AND CHANGE OF THE MOON

Name: AT THE FULL AND CHANGE OF THE MOON
Author: Dionne Brand
ISBN: 0-8021-1649-3

by Dionne Brand ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1999

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A poetic, loosely plotted tale beginning with an 1824 slave revolt in Trinidad. Herself born in Trinidad (though she now lives in Canada), second-novelist Brand (In Another Place, Not Here, 1997) vividly captures the essence of slavery in the leg irons clapped on Marie-Ursule, the witchy queen of a secret society of slaves. The shackles do physical damage, but their true harm is spiritual, for to be whole Marie-Ursule must be free. By the time the irons are removed, she has gone a little mad. She leads her “regiment” in a final act of defiance, mass suicide, which so distresses the British Admiralty that in another ten years it grudgingly frees the slaves. Marie-Ursule becomes a heroine of the island, both a curse and a great example to her progeny. First among these is Bola, the daughter Marie-Ursule could not bear to take with her to the grave, who lives well into the 20th century. Bola is barely parented by her distraught and often-absent father; she raises herself, becoming an absentminded figure who sits by the rocks of her tiny inlet, Culebra, watching whales and seducing men. No man sticks around, but Bola begets myriad children and grandchildren, who in turn raise themselves and wander the world from nearby Venezuela to Holland, Israel, and Canada. There’s the unpriestly Priest, who becomes a junkie and a gangster in the States; and the intriguing Samuel, of Indian and Trinidadian descent, who wants to fight for England and yet is relegated to hard labor because of his skin color. Finally, there is a modern Bola, a woman living in Culebra, in the family house, searching for an identity. Alice Walker with a Caribbean flavor and believable men: a sort of dream of history.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-8021-1649-3

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SALVAGE
by Dionne Brand

- BOOK REVIEW
IN ANOTHER PLACE, NOT HERE
by Dionne Brand

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

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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.