A solid historical novel about the end of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom (106366)—a kind of colorized version of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the early pages of her first book, Alder takes her most daring step when her hero Evyn gets his tongue cut off and is sold as a slave to the mistress of Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex and future kind of England. Evyn learns to read and write; as slave, then squire, and finally as foster son to Harold, he is witness to the hectic final days of the kingdom: Welsh rebellions, a shipwreck in Normandy, the death of King Edward and Harold's ascent to the throne, the defeat of Norway, and the Battle of Hastings. Evyn's role remains mostly peripheral—a spectator rather than a player. The plot sticks to the Chronicle and as a result has something stolid to it—a historical novel with history, not fiction, at the center, filled with heroic stereotypes straight out of the romance legends of the Middle Ages. If the characters are clichÇs, they are not cut out from cardboard, but from a medieval tapestry. Alder is an accomplished stylist; her prose is polished and often inspired. Chapter openings quote the Chronicle, setting a tone of quiet dignity, the language elevated, the syntax slightly archaicthe author has a huge vocabulary, full of period words and Old English in italics. Everything is intricately woven into one unbroken whole; Alder spins a good story, and what she spins best is description. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: May 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-34182-6
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
Beautiful and important.
When Death tells a story, you pay attention.
Liesel Meminger is a young girl growing up outside of Munich in Nazi Germany, and Death tells her story as “an attempt—a flying jump of an attempt—to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it.” When her foster father helps her learn to read and she discovers the power of words, Liesel begins stealing books from Nazi book burnings and the mayor’s wife’s library. As she becomes a better reader, she becomes a writer, writing a book about her life in such a miserable time. Liesel’s experiences move Death to say, “I am haunted by humans.” How could the human race be “so ugly and so glorious” at the same time? This big, expansive novel is a leisurely working out of fate, of seemingly chance encounters and events that ultimately touch, like dominoes as they collide. The writing is elegant, philosophical and moving. Even at its length, it’s a work to read slowly and savor.
Beautiful and important. (Fiction. 12+)Pub Date: March 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-83100-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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