An often haunting depiction of postwar Germany, hampered by an overly complex plot and overwrought prose.
In Fitzgerald’s historical novel set during and after World War II, a German couple finds an abandoned baby from a Jewish family and decides to secretly raise her as their own.
In 1941, Roland and Sophia Adler, while inspecting a home for sale in their native Cologne, discover an untended baby in desperate need of care. They find photographs with the child’s name affixed to them—Bebba Maria Segal—and eventually discover that her Jewish family members were sent to concentration camps from which they’re unlikely to return. Sophia, who’s still grieving the death of her own child, quickly decides that she wants to protect the baby from a similar fate, although Roland vehemently objects; he’s a Nazi officer who’s given to saying things such as “Our Führer has given us our pride and confidence back.” However, Sophia insists, and they move into the appropriated home of the Segal family. Roland goes off to war, and Sophia secretly cares for the child, now named Olinda Maria Adler—a perilous decision that could lead to her death, if discovered. In this deeply sentimental novel, Roland eventually renounces his devotion to Nazism and commits to being Olinda’s father, but he anxiously frets that she will one day learn the truth about her ancestry—a secret kept not only from her, but also from her uncle, Barak, who pays them a visit. Predictably, as a young adult, Olinda encounters the truth in her father’s diary; she must find a way to comprehend this news about her origins, and what it portends for her relationship with the couple who raised her.
Readers will find that the best part of Fitzgerald’s novel is its unflinching depiction of a defeated Germany after the war—one decimated by poverty, mass dislocation, and, among former soldiers, fear of reprisals. Also, the author artfully demonstrates the fraught nature of decisions in which every option seems to be weighted with danger and feelings of guilt. However, the plot as a whole is exasperatingly convoluted, as there are simply too many deaths, and many of them detract from the central storyline. The novel’s chief failing, though, is its overheated writing style. After reading Roland’s diary, for instance, Olinda is portrayed as conflicted about his decision to guard her from the truth regarding her birth: “He’s still the same father I love. No, I won’t drive myself crazy with knowing something that had never hurt me. Yet…yet…O.” The diary itself is full of rambling, melodramatic laments, peppered throughout with references to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At one point early in the novel, Sophia is described as having “eyelashes like the teeth of a Venus flytrap” and radiating an “aura of tense sexuality but not that of an obvious specimen built for fruitful procreation and heavy work.” Such stylistic excesses tend to drain the story of any dramatic power it might have had.
An often haunting depiction of postwar Germany, hampered by an overly complex plot and overwrought prose.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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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