An often engaging look at Germany in the final throes of Hitler’s rule, despite some flaws in its execution.
In Jorgensen’s (Where Did My Money Go?, 2009, etc.) historical novel, a German vows revenge on the Nazis when his wife is arrested for her Jewish ancestry.
In 1944, Karl Hecker works as a clerk for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, where he suffers the difficulties of war on the homefront, including food shortages, bombing raids, and fear of invasion by the Soviet army. A Nazi background check reveals that Anna, his wife, had a Jewish grandmother—a genealogical fact of which she was unaware. As a consequence, the Gestapo arrest her and ship her off to a labor camp, where she’ll almost certainly die. Karl is cleared of any legal wrongdoing, but he’s heartbroken by his loss and becomes obsessed with the idea of retaliation. His employers rightly suspect him of stealing classified documents at work, and as he realizes how precarious his situation is, he also figures out a way to punish Hitler’s despotic regime. (Jorgensen expresses Karl’s revelation in characteristically anodyne prose: “I took another look at the papers on my desk. I could hardly believe it. Here was a way to screw the Nazis!”) Karl decides to furtively deliver top-secret materials to the Allies via a contact in Bern, Switzerland—an old Jewish friend of Anna’s, professor Frederick Meinberg; in order to arrange the trip, he begins an affair with a colleague, Maria Moser, who has powerful family connections to the Nazi party and control over a network of couriers. As he makes the dangerous trip, he hopes to score cigarettes, which are invaluable on the black market, and maybe secure a way out of Germany for both himself and Maria before the Soviets arrive. The author’s knowledge of the historical period—and in particular, the lives of average German citizens during the war—is impressive. He affectingly depicts a world contaminated by suspicion, in which many lived in constant fear of harassment—even those without ties to the Jewish community. Despite the bombardment of propaganda, most Germans understand that a violent end to Hitler’s aggression is soon to come. Jorgensen movingly describes Karl’s anguish and irrepressible resolve as a kind of mini-revolt against an entire political machinery of tyranny. The novel’s drama, though, is undermined by bloodless prose, as well as by some weaknesses in the plot. For instance, Karl must curry favor with Maria in order to arrange his initial trip to Bern, but she seems to risk quite a lot in order to have lunch with a man whom she doesn’t know and shouldn’t trust. Karl also decides to disclose his meeting with Frederick Meinberg to the head of security at the German embassy in Bern, falsely claiming a professional obligation—a foolish lie that places him in grave danger. However, the historical authenticity of the story as a whole and the inspiring resoluteness of its protagonist still make for a thrilling read.
An often engaging look at Germany in the final throes of Hitler’s rule, despite some flaws in its execution.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4990-6781-1
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2018
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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