A vivid depiction of India under the British Raj and an indictment of its colonizers.
In Howard’s historical novel, conflicts come to a boil in a colonial Indian household.
Twelve-year-oldGene Hinton is the youngest son in an American Baptist missionary family stationed outside of Calcutta in 1936, made up of his father, mother, and three older brothers. As a missionary, Gene is not a great success, but locals tolerate their presence. The story alternates his point of view with the Hintons’ longtime servant’s—Arthur, an Indian man. The novel begins with the anxiously awaited arrival of a man they call Uncle Ellis, a mysterious British figure who pops in and out of their lives. He’s a judge who’s taken leave of his position in the Indian city of Simla for reasons that are unclear, accompanied by a bodyguard of Afghan soldiers. The boys have always been fascinated by Uncle Ellis, but as the days go on, they—and especially Gene—sense something unnerving about the fact that he’s effectively moved in with them, far from where Ellis usually lives. Arthur is even more attuned to the newcomer’s arrogance and casual cruelty, and later, Ellis’ secret finally comes to light. Also, Jaya, a mysterious young Indian woman, shows up, seduces Arthur, and awakens him to love and to the Indian Nationalist cause. Violence ensues, and in the end, everyone must face disturbing truths. Howard sketches Gene with skill, showing him to be quite mature and perceptive for someone so young. Of all the brothers, Gene is the most sensitive to his surroundings and the only one who’s a real friend to Arthur. The Hinton family’s cluelessness about India and its people is underscored time and again, and the oldest brother, John, has the air of superiority that was typical of many colonists. Arthur is characterized as someone who’s fended for himself since he was young and considers it a blessing to have a reliable job. Indeed, he’s resigned to his servitude until Jaya changes his worldview. Ellis’ vile attitudes about race are exposed, and Howard ably shows him to be a nasty piece of work.
A vivid depiction of India under the British Raj and an indictment of its colonizers.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781647427986
Page Count: 288
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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