An exciting, educational ride through medieval times.
Kimmich brings fresh eyes to an oft-studied period of European history and offers the opening for what promises to be a strong sequence of historical fiction.
The religious and political controversies of 13-century Europe have been an unexpectedly rich vein for recent novelists to mine. So it’s a testament to the quality of Kimmich’s volume—set in Europe during the early 1200s—that he offers an original contribution to an established niche. The book opens in Languedoc with its hero, Olivier de Mazan, ready to play witness as his mother is accepted as a priestess into a growing—and increasingly suspect—Christian sect. But that’s just the beginning of the book’s spiritual intrigue. Olivier learns of ancient scrolls that reveal Jesus married, had children, and produced a familial line—a concept that could rock the church to its foundations. After this revelation, Olivier is drawn into a maelstrom that will see his family threatened, his country imperiled, and his faith challenged. In preparing to set this drama in motion, Kimmich read widely among the histories of the era in both English and French, and his research pays off. His narrative not only brims with detail, but it also holds up under scrutiny; you could teach a class from this stuff. Yet the author’s thick descriptions of European lore are never overlong. His story moves nimbly, consistently enticing readers through every thrilling twist and turn. Perhaps only in one case does Kimmich’s devotion to authenticity lead him astray. Trying to fill his heroes’ mouths with period dialogue, Kimmich gives them lines that sound like a kind of faux Middle English. With all their “mayhaps,” “wots,” and “forsooths,” his characters too often seem like extras in a Monty Python sketch. Yet the admirable verisimilitude of the rest of his rendering means that these linguistic blips don’t distract much.
An exciting, educational ride through medieval times.Pub Date: May 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495913020
Page Count: 422
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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