Veteran Godwin’s latest (Grief Cottage, 2017, etc.) tracks a half-century friendship between two very different yet oddly compatible women.
The dean and dorm mistress of Lovegood College pair Feron Hood and Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, hoping that sunny, outgoing Merry will be a steadying influence on Feron, who has recently lost her alcoholic mother and fled from an abusive stepfather. The girls do indeed form a lasting bond even though Merry leaves after a single semester to run the family tobacco farm when her parents are killed in a plane crash. They have both taken their first steps as writers under the guidance of Literature and Composition teacher Maud Petrie, and during their mostly long-distance relationship, Feron will be goaded to write three novels by Merry’s occasional magazine publications; she is at work on a fourth about their friendship as the book closes. The two women rarely meet in person, and Feron is bad about answering letters, but we see that they remain important in each other’s thoughts. Godwin unfolds their stories in a meditative, elliptical fashion, circling back to reveal defining moments that include tragic losses, unexpected love, and nurturing friendships. Self-contained, uncommunicative Feron seems the more withholding character, but Merry voices one of the novel’s key insights: “Everyone has secrets no one else should know” while Feron reveals essential truths about her life in her novels. Maud Petrie and Lovegood dean Susan Fox, each of whom has secrets of her own, continue as strong presences for Feron and Merry, who have been shaped by Lovegood more enduringly than they might have anticipated. Feron’s courtly Uncle Rowan and blunt Aunt Mabel, Merry’s quirky brother Ritchie, devoted manager Mr. Jack, and a suave Navy veteran with intimate links to both women are among the many nuanced characters drawn by Godwin with their human contradictions and complexities on full display. A closing letter from Dean Fox movingly reiterates the novel’s conjoined themes of continuity and change.
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63286-822-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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Thriller writer Baldacci (A Minute to Midnight, 2019, etc.) launches a new detective series starring World War II combat vet Aloysius Archer.
In 1949, Archer is paroled from Carderock Prison (he was innocent) and must report regularly to his parole officer, Ernestine Crabtree (she’s “damn fine-looking”). Parole terms forbid his visiting bars or loose women, which could become a problem. Trouble starts when businessman Hank Pittleman offers Archer $100 to recover a ’47 Cadillac that’s collateral for a debt owed by Lucas Tuttle, who readily agrees he owes the money. But Tuttle wants his daughter Jackie back—she’s Pittleman’s girlfriend, and she won’t return to Daddy. Archer finds the car, but it’s been torched. With no collateral to collect, he may have to return his hundred bucks. Meanwhile, Crabtree gets Archer the only job available, butchering hogs at the slaughterhouse. He’d killed plenty of men in combat, and now he needs peace. The Pittleman job doesn’t provide that peace, but at least it doesn’t involve bashing hogs’ brains in. People wind up dead and Archer becomes a suspect. So he noses around and shows that he might have the chops to be a good private investigator, a shamus. This is an era when gals have gams, guys say dang and keep extra Lucky Strikes in their hatbands, and a Lady Liberty half-dollar buys a good meal. The dialogue has a '40s noir feel: “And don’t trust nobody.…I don’t care how damn pretty they are.” There’s adult entertainment at the Cat’s Meow, cheap grub at the Checkered Past, and just enough clichés to prove that no one’s highfalutin. Readers will like Archer. He’s a talented man who enjoys detective stories, won’t keep ill-gotten gains, and respects women. All signs suggest a sequel where he hangs out a shamus shingle.
Archer will be a great series character for fans of crime fiction. Let’s hope the cigarettes don’t kill him.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-5056-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | HISTORICAL FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
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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 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Categories: RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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