An unusual historical novel not soon forgotten.
Two outsiders and a monstrous dictator deal with tumultuous world events.
Beginning with the oft-rumored escape and survival of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, this novel twists and turns through some of the most significant historical events of the 20th century. Under the watchful eye of the sympathetic Count Carl Zurofsky, the girl, now known only as Anna, grows up in Romania. All the while, her country and birthright face upheaval and strife as history takes its course through world war, revolution, advancement, and tyranny. Both Anna and Carl are point-of-view characters, offering perspectives as outsiders, victims, and recipients of dramatic legacies. In fact, Carl’s family descends from Count Dracula, a history that stains him even as it inspires him to do good from the shadows. But since both Anna and Carl are somewhat removed from the centers of power they might otherwise occupy, the novel offers readers the perspective of none other than Stalin himself as he shapes history and is shaped by it in turn. The industrial backdrop of Russia’s five-year plans stands in stark contrast to the wild, pastoral beauty of Anna’s new surroundings. At the same time, her discovery of love and forgiveness is vastly different from Stalin’s struggles with power, corruption, and the fragile nonaggression pact he strikes with Germany on the eve of World War II. Logan (Time Is of the Essence, 2008, etc.) approaches this historical novel with a surprising poetic flair. The character perspectives switch back and forth frequently, although the engrossing narration does sometimes linger on one setting over the other when history demands a longer, more thorough treatment of a particular time or event. Meanwhile, the prose is flexible, readily shifting between traditional, effective dialogue and more verselike descriptions, making reading it a new experience. Fans of historical fiction may find the novel’s creative liberties a little fanciful or its short length insufficient to convey the temporal details common to the genre. But if readers keep an open mind, they’ll be treated to a lyrical, character-focused journey into events and figures rarely humanized in fiction.
An unusual historical novel not soon forgotten.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4917-5094-0
Page Count: 196
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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