A haunting story that provides a welcome reminder of the enduring lives of books.
A well-known novel comes to life.
Rescued from a Nazi book burning in Berlin in 1933, a copy of Joseph Roth’s novel Rebellion—the tragic story of a German soldier who becomes a barrel organ player upon returning to Germany missing one leg after World War I—serves as the unusual narrator of Hamilton’s novel. Nearly a century after the book’s publication, Lena Knecht, an artist living in New York City whose grandfather received the volume from the professor who saved it from the flames, returns to Germany with the book in hand hoping to discover the significance of a cryptic map sketched by its original owner on one of its blank pages. Hamilton's artful story teems with subplots that include the account of Roth’s disastrous marriage to Friederike Reichel, a union destroyed by her mental illness and his alcoholism; Lena’s relationship with Armin Schneider, a young Chechen refugee who returns the book to her when it’s stolen shortly after her arrival in Germany and then joins her search; and Armin's sister Madina, who lost her leg in a bombing in Chechnya and is stalked by her dangerous former lover, a violent right-wing nationalist. There are disturbing parallels between the world of Roth’s novel, published in 1924 as the Weimar Republic began to slide toward the Third Reich, and contemporary Europe, where the growing presence of immigrants like Armin and Madina sparks fear and distrust. The novel neatly balances these realistic storylines with fanciful images described in Rebellion’s distinctive, appealing voice, as when the book refers to its “two years on the shelf right next to a small book on insects,” recalling how it was “the happiest time of my life, living with all that buzzing, like a constant summer.” Lena eventually solves the map mystery, bringing the story full circle to an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
A haunting story that provides a welcome reminder of the enduring lives of books.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32066-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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