Well executed and full of immersive period detail, but the author would do well to put a little more trust in his readers.
In Stopa’s novel of historical fiction, the Continental Army regroups during its hard winter at Valley Forge and Gen. Washington’s intelligence network works to foil an assassination attempt.
In the winter of 1777, the Continental Army was on the ropes. After spending much of the war outmanned and outmaneuvered by the British, when the rebels set up their winter camp in Valley Forge, Penn., they’re in desperate need of a change in fortune. Henry Nichols, a brigadier in the British Army, senses an opportunity in the rebellion’s troubles. If he can exploit this time of weakness and assassinate George Washington, the rebel army’s charismatic leader, the rebellion might just fall apart. He travels to the colonies with orders from the King himself to carry out the assassination while operating outside the usual chain of command, much to the annoyance of British commander-in-chief Gen. Sir William Howe, who feels the plan is ungentlemanly. Caring little for Howe’s opinion, Nichols coerces John Waterman, a businessman and smuggler recently captured by the English, into taking part. But the strong-willed and resourceful Waterman doesn’t appreciate being forced into Nichols’ plot and works to extricate himself, while hopefully turning a tidy profit in the process. Meanwhile, Lt. Frederick Graham, stationed within British headquarters as Howe’s aide-de-camp, is working as a spy for Washington and must expose Nichols’ machinations before they come to fruition. Stopa clearly knows this period well, as he’s filled his novel with a great deal of compelling historical detail. However, some of the dialogue reads woodenly, and Stopa too often breaks the vaunted “show don’t tell” rule of writing, explicitly stating what’s going on in a character’s mind rather than letting his actions speak for him. Still, the plot moves at a nice clip, and the characters largely ring true.
Well executed and full of immersive period detail, but the author would do well to put a little more trust in his readers.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-1456399580
Page Count: 305
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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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