Light historical romance with the benefit of a sterling pedigree.
For Jane Austen lovers, this latest take on the Darcy clan offers an amusing addition to the literature of Regency London’s mores.
Aston’s previous Darcy novels (The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alathea Darcy, not reviewed, etc.) concern the former Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy’s five daughters—this story takes on the exploits of a few cousins. At 19, Cassandra Darcy is in possession of rare beauty, a fine fortune and a very un-ladylike talent for painting. And though she has all she could ask for, she is under the thumb of her pious stepfather, Mr. Partington. Cassandra’s future is thrown into doubt, though, when Henry Lisser, a German landscape painter brought in to paint the family estate, begins a flirtation with naughty cousin Belle. Everyone believes it was Cassandra kissing Lisser behind the bushes, and to save Belle’s already shaky reputation, Cassandra agrees to go to Bath to reflect on her wickedness. While there, she falls in love with James Eyre, and the two run away to London. But when James halts the marriage plans to negotiate a rich dowry (and too late, passionate Cassandra has already slept with him!), she spurns James, and in turn becomes a social pariah. Enter dashing cousin Horatio Darcy, a lawyer representing her stepfather, to offer Cassandra two choices: Repair to the country and live a life of spinsterhood with the vile Mrs. Harris, or become destitute. Cassandra chooses to make her way in London as a portraitist, but during her first day of freedom makes a monumental error in judgment—she takes rooms with a procuress who intends to turn Cassandra into Lord Usborne’s mistress. Cassandra escapes life in the demimonde with the help of her cousin Camilla, who, with the help of kind Mr. Lisser, sets Cassandra up with her own painting studio. Austenites may balk at this racy, wholly 21st-century reinvention of Austen (Lord Frederick has an eye for men, our teen heroine is no virgin and Aston’s feminist motifs are a bit heavy handed), but all in all, much enjoyment can be had from Cassandra’s attempts to find love and artistic happiness.
Light historical romance with the benefit of a sterling pedigree.Pub Date: March 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-7490-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
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
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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