by Eva Stachniak ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 25, 2014
An unremarkable account of a remarkable reign.
Catherine the Great suffers a debilitating stroke and reflects back on her life, loves and country in Stachniak’s second in her series (The Winter Palace, 2012, etc.) about the Russian empress.
Unbeknownst to those holding vigil, Catherine is still in control of her mental faculties and aware of the activities around her in the hours before she dies. Although she is paralyzed and appears lifeless, she retains her ability to remember her rise from humble beginnings in Prussia as Sophie, the princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, to be the powerful ruler Catherine of Russia. Betrothed at a young age to her second cousin, Peter, the heir to the Russian throne, Sophie is taken under the wing of Empress Elizabeth, renamed Catherine Alekseyevna, and diligently studies the language and acclimates to her new country. However, she soon realizes Peter would rather play with his toy soldiers and spend time with his mistress than be with her. And Elizabeth’s initial support has turned into open hostility. Saved from a collapsing house by a palace guard, Serge Saltykov, Catherine takes him as a lover. Their affair produces a son, Paul, who’s immediately swept away and raised by Empress Elizabeth until her death. (Catherine bears two more children with other lovers, although one dies, and the other is delivered in secret.) As Catherine wrests power from Peter III and ascends to the throne, she has affairs with several more suitors, including Grigory Potemkin, who’s devoted to her and with whom she shares a singular love. While expanding the Russian Empire, quelling uprisings and amassing wealth, Catherine also tries to ensure her grandson’s succession—but even she cannot guarantee the course of events from beyond the grave. Although Stachniak creates a noteworthy representation of life at the Russian court during Catherine’s rule, she fails to draw readers into the political and personal intrigues. Rather than a vibrant, earthy, intelligent woman, Catherine seems disappointingly mundane, and her court contains an endless succession of names and nicknames with few distinguishing features.
An unremarkable account of a remarkable reign.Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-553-80813-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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