The story may not be fresh, but the detail is rich and elaborate enough to make for a worthwhile read.
Isaac does not often receive as much attention as other Judeo-Christian patriarchs, but Henderson (Wise Men Seek Him, 2011) explores the significance of his tale in her religious fiction novel.
The first part is told through flashback. A young Isaac asks his father about Yahweh and the covenant made with his family. Abraham answers Isaac's questions by revealing his own journey of faith, describing both spiritual highs—when he left his homeland at God's prompting, when he trusted God to help him defeat Kedorlaomer's army. But he also reveals his spiritual lows—when he referred to Sarah as his "sister" instead of his "wife," when he attempted to rush the covenant promise by conceiving a child with his wife's maidservant. Isaac's first opportunity to commit to his own faith comes when he demonstrates his willingness to become a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. From then on, the book shifts into the present and focuses on Isaac. His major challenge is believing that Yahweh will build his nation through Jacob, the second-born twin, rather than Esau, the firstborn. Since Yahweh conveyed this message to Isaac’s wife instead of Isaac himself, Isaac has a difficult time believing that the message is real. It takes him until the moment he is tricked into blessing Jacob before he learns to accept and fear God's will, thereby fully maturing his faith. Henderson successfully brings this section of biblical history to life by fleshing out the characters involved. Without additional perspective, it can be difficult to see biblical heroes positively when they act in unbecoming ways. The author also strengthens her presentation by demonstrating thorough research about the era's customs. Details about cultural practices, like the rules governing how nomads use land, give the book a solid backbone. This stability is only occasionally upset when a misplaced idiom, like "kick the bucket," is introduced, jarring the reader out of the ancient Middle East. Such stumbling blocks are minor, though.
The story may not be fresh, but the detail is rich and elaborate enough to make for a worthwhile read.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490811246
Page Count: 370
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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