Smart, skillful entertainment.
A real-life train crash propels Donoghue’s latest work of historical fiction.
It begins on the Normandy coast on Oct. 22, 1895, as Mado Pelletier boards the eponymous train after buying some unspecified “supplies.” Donoghue displays her usual flair for in-depth research with the next scene, when 7-1/2-year-old Maurice Marland is confused by the 5-minute discrepancy between the times on the clocks over the station entrance and on the platform. The station clock is set ahead to prod tardy passengers, the train guard explains. Similar nuggets of train lore throughout—most notably detailed descriptions of the driver’s and stoker’s perfectly synchronized teamwork—add to rather than detract from the Hitchcockian suspense as readers wait for the crash. (It’s a nice touch that, reminiscent of Donoghue’s contemporary novels, the aforesaid driver and stoker, both men, are unspokenly in love.) The author assembles a large cast, many of whom are real-life figures, though some were not actually on the train. Readers won’t care as Donoghue imagines compelling inner lives for her factual and fictional characters. They include ammunitions manufacturer Jules-Félix Gévelot, who has secret proclivities; African American artist Henry Tanner, who finds a kindred spirit in Cuban-descended medical student Marcelle de Heredia, also the subject of prejudice; and Alice Guy, secretary to the head of Gaumont and Co., who battles sexism to convince her clueless boss there’s a future in moving pictures. About a third of the way through the trip, we learn that Mado, an anarchist, carries a bomb to blow up the train; her principal targets are deputies on their way to the National Assembly session, but she knows many innocent people will also die, and her private struggle with this knowledge joins other expertly juggled plot lines to render each character a sharply delineated individual. Donoghue doesn’t aspire here to the thematic depth that distinguishes such earlier historical novels as Life Mask (2004); this one’s just for fun.
Smart, skillful entertainment.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668082799
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Summit
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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