A unique and captivating story of a young mind torn between science and art.
The young son of a watchmaker with a fascination for art begins creating inkblot drawings in this engrossing debut novel by Kleiger.
Anton, the son of great Russian Jewish horologist Herman Zellinksy, narrates this novel about a family in the turn-of-the century village of Zastavia. The young Anton dreams of following in his father’s footsteps, but his “golden brother,” Chaim, has been chosen by his father to learn the craft. Anton is ignored and spends time drawing in the company of his mother, Marina, who is of Hungarian ancestry. Marina uses inkblot cards to foretell futures. When Herman discovers this, he throws the cards in the fire, calling her a “gypsy witch.” Anton salvages one inkblot and attempts to re-create more. Marina then disappears, and Chaim reveals a desire to join the Russian army. Herman begins to teach Anton watchmaking, but a discovery causes the younger man to leave home only to be forcibly conscripted by the army. The story tells of Anton’s being reunited with his brother on the Eastern Front, searching for his mother in Hungary, and continuing his education in Zurich. One of the most compelling elements of this well-written and lovingly embroidered novel involves if or how Anton’s life will intersect with that of the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach, pioneer of the eponymous inkblot test. Kleiger is a master of fine detail, found in Proustian moments such as when Anton describes an aunt who “always saved extra sweet breads for me”: “To this day, whenever I smell cinnamon or cardamom, I think of Aunt Nadya.” Kleiger also carefully captures the intricacies of watchmaking: “The mechanism consisted of a crown wheel, the rencontre, which was rotated by the power of weights.” The author’s lack of dialogue is unnatural and unnecessarily grandiose when representing a village boy such as Chaim: “I seek the path of triumphant warrior. I will lead men with proud sounds of trumpets announcing the charge.” Still, this is a spellbindingly measured narrative that entertains and enthralls.
A unique and captivating story of a young mind torn between science and art.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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