A crackling good epic, both comic and bawdy.
From Charyn (Raised by Wolves: The Turbulent Art and Times of Quentin Tarantino, 2006, etc.), a tale of intrigue, spying, George Washington, Benedict Arnold, Manhattan prostitutes, a castrato and a one-eye double agent—in other words, almost more history, character and action than can be contained in a single novel.
The eponymous narrator, John Stocking, grows up in and around a brothel in New York City and is both bewildered and curious about who his father is. He knows his mother is Gert, the fiery madam in charge of the “nuns” at the facility (located in a Red Light district called “Holy Ground”), but the mystery of his paternity remains for much of the story. (For a while he’s led to believe that George Washington is not just the father of his country.) The novel opens with John at the age of 17, seemingly in danger of being hanged, but Washington takes pity on him. Shortly afterward, John finds out that he was not actually in real danger, and from this point the novel becomes a picaresque adventure as the reader follows John’s tortuous path through the American Revolution. He falls in love with Clara, a ravishing enchantress who’s the most lusted-after woman in Gert’s stable. One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is its portrayal of George Washington, far removed from the thin-lipped, dour patriot whose image dominates our view of the Revolution. Here he is a larger than life (literally—he’s portrayed as a giant) and fully human character who’s as concerned with the goings-on at Gwen’s as he is with Valley Forge. Other historical personages flit through the book with varying degrees of intensity: George Washington’s secretary, the diminutive and guileful Alexander Hamilton; “Sir Billy” Howe, commander of the British army; his brother Admiral Lord Richard Howe (aka “Black Dick”); and most significantly, Benedict Arnold, either a hero or a patriot, depending on whose side you’re on.
A crackling good epic, both comic and bawdy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-393-06497-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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