A disappointing account of a fascinating chapter in history.
Three young people provide essential help in the movement to save Bulgaria’s Jews from the Nazis.
Unofficial memoirs (released after the end of communism) recorded the sudden halt of plans to send thousands of Bulgarian Jews to death camps in 1943. This novel explores that still contentious history, reflecting uncertainty over the roles of King Boris, the Orthodox Church, ordinary citizens, and some government officials. The alternating first-person narrators are Michael, a Jewish driver for Sofia’s archbishop hiding in plain sight as a seminary student; Peter, who is drawn to the idea of communist revolution; and Lily, who works with collaborators and secretly leaks information to the resistance. An initial deportation of Jews from Bulgarian-held Skopje catalyzes the three youths. Events cover spring 1943, skip a year when the tide was turning against the Nazis, and end with their rout in September 1944. More sophisticated readers will find the novel incompletely imagined, with undigested research, clichéd expressions, and minimally developed characters whose undifferentiated voices combine jarringly contemporary slang with overly formal SAT vocabulary. Improbable behavior abounds, requiring suspension of disbelief. The lack of atmosphere limits the impact of the novel, but the diary entry format adds suspense, and the focus on young adult protagonists is effective for the target audience. Moral issues around assassination and revenge killing go unexplored.
A disappointing account of a fascinating chapter in history. (historical note) (Historical fiction. 15-18)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781595801197
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Santa Monica Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging
Audrey Rose Wadsworth, 17, would rather perform autopsies in her uncle’s dark laboratory than find a suitable husband, as is the socially acceptable rite of passage for a young, white British lady in the late 1800s.
The story immediately brings Audrey into a fractious pairing with her uncle’s young assistant, Thomas Cresswell. The two engage in predictable rounds of “I’m smarter than you are” banter, while Audrey’s older brother, Nathaniel, taunts her for being a girl out of her place. Horrific murders of prostitutes whose identities point to associations with the Wadsworth estate prompt Audrey to start her own investigation, with Thomas as her sidekick. Audrey’s narration is both ponderous and polemical, as she sees her pursuit of her goals and this investigation as part of a crusade for women. She declares that the slain aren’t merely prostitutes but “daughters and wives and mothers,” but she’s also made it a point to deny any alignment with the profiled victims: “I am not going as a prostitute. I am simply blending in.” Audrey also expresses a narrow view of her desired gender role, asserting that “I was determined to be both pretty and fierce,” as if to say that physical beauty and liking “girly” things are integral to feminism. The graphic descriptions of mutilated women don’t do much to speed the pace.
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging . (Historical thriller. 15-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-27349-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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