Treacly and entirely predictable, though it will no doubt appeal to undemanding readers looking for a warm and fuzzy...
More sentimental fiction from actor/author Wilder (What Is This Thing Called Love?, 2010, etc.).
Wounded in France on Christmas Day 1944, American medic Tom Cole is discharged from an English hospital for a one-week leave in London. A motherly nurse sets him up with a free room, plus directions on which play to see and which restaurant to eat in. She’s the second (after Tom’s commanding officer) in a series of subsidiary characters whose cozy benevolence is certainly striking in the midst of a world war. Indeed, an atmosphere of unadulterated sweetness enfolds this very slight tale of Tom’s romance with Danish refugee Anna Rosenkilde, whom he meets at the restaurant on his first night of leave. The only potential conflict—when Tom reports for an assignment in intelligence and discovers that Anna doesn’t work in Radar, as she told him—is quickly resolved when she suddenly disappears and Tom learns that Anna is an agent of the Special Operations Executive and has been arrested after parachuting into occupied Denmark. Naturally, Tom immediately gets permission to attempt to rescue his love from a Nazi camp outside Alsace; naturally, he speaks fluent French and German (Dad was Austrian, Mom French); and naturally, he springs Anna with just a few blasts of submachine guns—which come into play again when the nasty Nazis break into the home where they are celebrating Passover with the family hiding them. Tom is wounded as they are fleeing France, but that doesn’t stop him from insisting on returning when a British double agent reveals that the Frenchman who helped them has been captured.
Treacly and entirely predictable, though it will no doubt appeal to undemanding readers looking for a warm and fuzzy adventure.Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-59891-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
He’s Ivo Maltravers, the proud English Duke of Wareham, currency poor but heritage wealthy; and she’s Cora Cash, if not...
A shrewd, spirited historical romance with flavors of Edith Wharton, Daphne du Maurier, Jane Austen, Upstairs, Downstairs and a dash of People magazine that charts a bumpy marriage of New World money and Old World tradition.
He’s Ivo Maltravers, the proud English Duke of Wareham, currency poor but heritage wealthy; and she’s Cora Cash, if not prejudiced then certainly a forthright modern girl who may be the richest American heiress of the late-Victorian era. Their engagement swiftly follows a hunting accident in England, and details of the marriage, such as her gold-and-diamond-trimmed corset and 90-couture-gown trousseau, fill the gossip magazines of the day. But once installed at Lulworth, Ivo’s vast country estate, Cora—like the heroine of Rebecca at Manderley—begins to feel a little out of her depth. The English are slippery, not least Ivo’s mother, the Double Duchess, and Ivo himself seems to be involved with the beautiful blond wife of another nobleman. British TV producer Goodwin’s debut, a knowing, judicious blend of Gilded Age extravagance, below-stairs perspective, delivered via Cora’s black maid, and sophisticated social tableaux, offers reader satisfaction. The marriage suffers its threats, and misunderstandings but a finale overlooking the crashing waves of a Dorset beach resolves matters with characteristic passion and maturity.Pub Date: June 21, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-65865-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying: apparently there’s nothing Egan can’t do.
After stretching the boundaries of fiction in myriad ways (including a short story written in Tweets), Pulitzer Prize winner Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010, etc.) does perhaps the only thing left that could surprise: she writes a thoroughly traditional novel.
It shouldn’t really be surprising, since even Egan’s most experimental work has been rich in characters and firmly grounded in sharp observation of the society around them. Here, she brings those qualities to a portrait of New York City during the Depression and World War II. We meet 12-year-old Anna Kerrigan accompanying her adored father, Eddie, to the Manhattan Beach home of suave mobster Dexter Styles. Just scraping by “in the dregs of 1934,” Eddie is lobbying Styles for a job; he’s sick of acting as bagman for a crooked union official, and he badly needs money to buy a wheelchair for his severely disabled younger daughter, Lydia. Having rapidly set up these situations fraught with conflict, Egan flashes forward several years: Anna is 19 and working at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, the sole support of Lydia and their mother since Eddie disappeared five years earlier. Adult Anna is feisty enough to elbow her way into a job as the yard’s first female diver and reckless enough, after she runs into him at one of his nightclubs, to fall into a one-night stand with Dexter, who initially doesn’t realize whose daughter she is. Disastrous consequences ensue for them both but only after Egan has expertly intertwined three narratives to show us what happened to Eddie while drawing us into Anna’s and Dexter’s complicated longings and aspirations. The Atlantic and Indian oceans play significant roles in a novel saturated by the sense of water as a vehicle of destiny and a symbol of continuity (epigraph by Melville, naturally). A fatal outcome for one appealing protagonist is balanced by Shakespearean reconciliation and renewal for others in a tender, haunting conclusion.
Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying: apparently there’s nothing Egan can’t do.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1673-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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