A complex, compassionate novel about Germans coming to terms with their actions during WWII.
A Nazi official, his wife, and a traveling performer struggle to rebuild their lives in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Kosack and Overmann’s historical novel.
With “the chaos of the Nazis” behind him, former Gestapo higher-up Franz Tegge must now “survive the peace.” After he turns himself over to the Americans, he’s plucked from a POW camp by the U.S. Army’s secret service, which enlists him to track down fellow Nazis trying to evade capture by leaving Berlin. As Franz keeps tabs on his former colleagues, his wife, Mathilde, performs forced labor with other Nazi wives, clearing away rubble for long hours, clambering over “fragments of cobblestones left by burned-out tanks, eviscerated cars, tipped over advertisement pillars.” She brings her measly rations home to her extended family, including her own two children; her sister, a pious pastor’s wife; and her sister’s two kids. On a dare, two of the youngsters climb a bombed-out apartment building, and tightrope walker Camillo Baumgartner saves Mathilde’s eldest, Karla, from falling to her death. His act of generosity sparks a slow-burning flirtation between him and Mathilde, as well as plenty of raised eyebrows from neighborhood gossips, who disapprove of Germans socializing with “Gypsies.” Keja, a performer in Camillo’s troupe, likewise objects to the budding romance; however, she soon finds out that Camillo’s involvement with the Tegge clan may have less to do with his love for Mathilde than his past with Franz. As they use elements of classic melodrama, the authors sometimes let their prose overheat: “Irrational, powerful fear tore at Mathilde’s stomach as her fear became a fear of fear itself.” For the most part, though, the duo’s English-language debut finds emotional resonance in even its smallest details, such as a 2-year-old fast asleep despite the thunder of bombs outside his door or a starving teenager relishing her first piece of spearmint gum. Although the Franz and Camillo chapters push the narrative forward, Mathilde is the novel’s emotional core—a multifaceted woman who’s all too aware that her “dread over what Franz had done” casts a shadow over her choices.
A complex, compassionate novel about Germans coming to terms with their actions during WWII.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1937506803
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Rockstar Publishing House
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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