An engaging history with a strong female lead, although less than riveting dramatically.
A tribute to Elizabeth Catherine Thomas Carne written as a historical novel narrated by Carne in the period’s style.
George acknowledges up front that there is little verifiable information available about her protagonist other than confirmation of her unique accomplishments for a 19th-century woman in England: She was a banker, “a published geologist, ecologist, first thinker industrial psychologist, mathematician, industrialist, philanthropist, poet, [and] artist.” And so the novelist collaborated with British historian Dirring to create an intriguing, forward-thinking character almost out of whole cloth and a narrative that paints an informative portrait of the values, customs, and class divisions of the era. The finished product, however, is an occasionally uneven amalgam of fiction, history, and philosophical treatises. Elizabeth, youngest of her parents’ eight children, was born in 1817 into an established banking family in Penzance, located on the shore of the English Channel in Southwest England. Her grandfather was a founding partner of the Penzance Bank. We meet Elizabeth when she is 15, accompanying her father, Joseph, the bank’s leading partner, who is guiding philosopher/economist/politician John Stuart Mill on a “walking tour” of their small town. Joseph has a heavy financial investment in the successful mining operations in Cornwall and an equal intellectual interest in the geological composition of the county. This passion he has passed along to Elizabeth through constant tutorage. Elizabeth gradually realizes that Joseph intends for her to be his designated heir, assuming leadership of the family’s vast holdings and remaining faithful to the family’s legacy. Historically, the novel is fascinating, full of tidbits about Cornwall’s banking, mining, and shipping industries as well as in-depth discussions of the prevalent illiteracy among the miners and farmers. Many of Elizabeth’s musings center around her commitment to educating the masses—both male and female. It’s a complex narrative, but except for sporadic adventures and a star-crossed love story, it’s more didactic and philosophical than emotional.
An engaging history with a strong female lead, although less than riveting dramatically.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-459-9
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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