A sharp historical tableau of early-20th-century France that is undermined by uneven writing.
A debut historical novel chronicles the lives of four young Parisians living under the specter of potential war.
In 1905, Robert d’Avillard is studying civil engineering in Paris at the Ecole Polytechnique and is part of a spirited young group of student intellectuals who gather regularly to discuss political currents. The topic of the day is the alarming aggressiveness of Germany and its encouragement of an independence movement in Morocco. Robert is inspired by the patriotic commitment of a soldier, Col. Ferdinand Foch, who implores him to join the military, which will desperately need talented engineers to fortify its infrastructure in advance of an increasingly inevitable German invasion. Meanwhile, Robert falls in love with Sarah Morozovski, a student of law and political philosophy, who is fiercely antagonistic to the general threat of militarism and sympathetic with socialist causes. But the two are pulled apart just as their romance blooms, when Robert joins the corps of army engineers and Sarah accepts a position working for a journalistic publication in Berlin. In her absence, Robert begins a new relationship with Marie Bonneau, a young musician, but even as their courtship hurtles toward eventual matrimony, he never forgets Sarah, and those feelings are reignited when they meet again years later in Paris. Robert’s cousin, Thomas, who was a student of philosophy and theology, becomes a priest but also becomes fond of Marie just as Sarah re-enters the scene. While the book follows the entangled romantic complications of the four friends, the backbone of the story is really the inexorable march toward World War I and the impact it has not only on the novel’s protagonists, but also France and Europe. Whitaker skillfully captures the crisis of impending world war and the national anxiety this created for a whole generation of young French men and women whose lives were permanently altered by its arrival. The author’s knowledge of the era’s geopolitical particulars is beyond reproach. But the tale’s drama is deflated by the wooden, overly genteel prose, especially evident in the dialogue. Consider Robert asking Sarah out to dinner: “If you don’t feel that you need to go home to change, we can go to a place that my family has known for years, which I think you will not only find quite hygienic but also quite special.”
A sharp historical tableau of early-20th-century France that is undermined by uneven writing.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-3140-3
Page Count: 468
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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