A combination of fact and fiction that’s somewhat slow but often engaging.
A historical novel that explores the causes and repercussions of one of the most well-known tragedies of the 20th century.
Kate Royston is aboard the RMS Carpathiaruefully celebrating her 21st birthday, as she’s broke and fleeing a horrible, secret tragedy in a life she’s left behind her. Out for a nighttime stroll, she has a conversation with radio officer Harold Cottam about distress signals received from the RMS Titanicof the White Star Line. After changing course and proceeding to the scene of the sinking, the crew and passengers of the Carpathiahelp to rescue and care for more than 700 people who made it into lifeboats. Kate finds herself caring for the wealthy, well-connected widow Eva Trentham, who’s determined to force a U.S. Senate inquiry into the tragedy, with the hope of taking down J.P. Morgan, the ship’s de facto owner. Among the survivors is Danny McSorley, a radio operator who sets about helping Cottam manage the high volume of messages about survivors, but he too has secrets—not the least of which is how he managed to get a seat on a lifeboat, as he’s not a woman or child. Through Kate’s interactions and via the Senate inquiry, readers witness accounts from many other survivors, including immigrants in third-class accommodations; a few surviving officers, including second officer Charles Lightoller; White Star Line chairman Bruce Ismay; civilian passenger Jack Thayer, who now inherits his father’s fortune; and lookout Frederick Fleet. Many of the events leading up to, during, and immediately after the sinking of the Titanicwill be familiar to readers, as they’ve been well documented and portrayed onscreen. This book focuses on revealing key facts of the disaster through eyewitness accounts and official questioning that appear to be a mix of real-life sources and fictionalized dialogue. Hodgetts takes a highly familiar event and makes it fresh by weaving her own characters into the tapestry. The narrative is not as tight and briskly paced as readers might wish, however, due to the sheer volume of information included here.
A combination of fact and fiction that’s somewhat slow but often engaging.Pub Date: April 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-90320-0
Page Count: 363
Publisher: Emerge Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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