Stewart (Pomp and Circumstance, 1991, etc., etc.) customarily produces narratives filled with snapshot-like scenes of high drama- -perhaps with TV rights in mind—and this lurid, mid-19th-century adventure at sea is no exception. Justin Savage is the youngest son of the mortally ill shipping tycoon Nathaniel Savage. Although the spunky Justin is his father's favorite, as an illegitimate child he will not inherit the bulk of the old man's fortune; rather, the evil Sylvaner, Justin's much older half-brother, will take over the family business once Nathaniel dies. Sylvaner's wife, Adelaide Crowninshield, is his equal when it comes to all things malevolent; when the wayward, greedy pair learn that Nathaniel's last wish is for Justin to sail to China as a cabin boy on one of the ships in his fleet, they pay a crew member to murder him at sea. En route to China, Justin quickly makes many friends, including the lovely Samantha Aspinall, who saves his life and foils Sylvaner's plot. While Justin, with Samantha's help, reads his mother's diary (left him by Nathaniel, who wanted him to learn the truth of his origins), Sylvaner has uncovered what the diary reveals: That Justin's real mother was Adelaide's sister, making Justin Sylvaner's brother and nephew-by- marriage, and the only male heir to the Crowninshield name. Justin and Samantha's innocent shipboard romance is thwarted when, improbably, a pirate named Madame Ching captures their ship and the two are separated; both are later forced to marry for the wrong reasons, but eventually, after his Far Eastern adventures, Justin falls in love again, this time with the ravishing Fiametta. Through it all, he must dodge the relentless Sylvaner and find a way to survive the Taiping rebellion in China; when he finally gets home, everyone gets their deserts. Contrived (down to the un-punny title), although the fast pace and swashbuckling style lend a certain readability.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-86111-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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