A period piece full of memorable characters set in a tumultuous time for Imperial China.
Cook’s historical novel follows the travails of a Chinese family in the era of the White Lotus Rebellion.
Qiezi is a teenager who lives with her parents, Yan Xian and Lai Xinru,in late 18th-century China. Qiezi is not like most girls of the time period; she has unbound feet. Although she gets some snickers for her “duck feet,” she can move nimbly through the mountains. She also has an encyclopedic knowledge of plants. While this is invaluable for the preparation of medicinal treatments, her plant explorations have led to her addiction to mantuoluo, “the golden ocean flower.” In small doses, the plant’s effects can be hallucinogenic; in large doses, they can be deadly. Qiezi no longer experiences the “visionary effects,” and her body has adapted in such a way that, if she has sex, her partner will die. Early in the story, she is raped by a government official, whose subsequent death compels Qiezi and her parents to flee. Qiezi makes her way to a nunnery, while her parents meet a woman named Sai’er, who is part of a society with scandalous views on sex; she is eager to induct her new friends. Before the main narrative gets underway, early pages involve a dispute with the family’s neighbor and some carpenters, and the material proves sluggish. The pace does not pick up until the family has to flee, and the author introduces the novel’s most striking elements, Sai’er and her group. The story goes on to incorporate the White Lotus Rebellion and includes compelling details, such as the mechanics of a gu poisoning. Although dialogue can be obvious (“We’re both exhausted and hungry and can’t make clear decisions in this state”), the compelling characters in this peculiar tale keep the reader hungry for more.
A period piece full of memorable characters set in a tumultuous time for Imperial China.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781732277472
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Magic Theater Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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