A wide-ranging historical romance—the first novel by a historian hitherto known for his two books about the Rockefeller family—hearkens back to the American Revolution and the complex figure of Benedict Arnold, renowned among military peers as “the very genius of war” while subsequently reviled as the very apotheosis of treachery and deceit. Harr’s efficient narrative (marred only by early pages weighted down with awkwardly introduced historical background information) shifts adroitly between civilian life on the home front (particularly Philadelphia, which eventually, briefly falls under British control) and the various battlefields where Arnold’s reputation for tactical mastery was earned. There are especially vivid accounts of the battles of Lake Champlain’s Valcourt Bay (a naval encounter in which Arnold simulated a trap, then gracefully “escaped” it), New York’s Fort Stanwix (where Arnold ingeniously co-opted enemy General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne’s solidarity with Mohawk and Seneca Indians), and—a critical turning-point—Saratoga. Numerous historical figures appear and reappear, including a morally conflicted (though ever dutiful) Commander George Washington, a politically astute Alexander Hamilton, and—arguably the story’s secondary protagonist—British Major John Andre, a cultivated, stoical, and thoroughly decent man whose fate becomes inexorably linked with Arnold’s once the latter has turned his back on the “pompous” US Congress that undervalues and underestimates him and reluctantly changed his allegiance. Harr neither idealizes Arnold’s belligerent charisma nor soft-pedals his intemperate vanity; the result is the most compelling of a series of characterizations that incarnate, in moving human form, the volatile emotions of an emergent nation divided by the warring claims of loyalty and independence. The novels of Kenneth Roberts (such as Arundel and Rabble in Arms, both from the 1930s) remain the standard for fiction portraying this era. But Harr’s ambitious debut is an informed, dramatic, and well-woven contribution to a genre that seems to be, and shouldn’t be, out of fashion these days.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88704-8
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
