A fine World War II-era historical novel that breathes life into a long-gone era with its timeless characters and exciting...
In an inspiring novel of survival, a young Polish girl experiences marriage and motherhood in a time of war.
Based on the true story of Danuta Buczak, Koenig’s debut novel is set in Soviet-occupied Poland in the 1940s. Seventeen-year-old Danuta, a fiery, spirited teenager, grows up before she is ready when she hastily marries her true love, Rudolph, before he goes to war as a lieutenant in the Polish army. Danuta acknowledges to herself, but to no one else, that her insistence on a quick, ill-attended wedding is primarily about placing a hold on Rudolph before he leaves. She believes that they’ll have at least a few weeks together before Rudolph must depart, but she’s dismayed when he’s led to the train station on the very night they wed, leaving Danuta in a strange limbo. As the war escalates, Danuta and her parents are constantly at risk. Rudolph returns, injured, and he and Danuta begin their married life together, struggling as Rudolph tries to find steady work and as they get to know each other. Danuta is soon pregnant, and her life takes a terrible turn when Soviet state security arrests Rudolph for having served in the Polish army, and he’s sentenced to death. Later Danuta is apprehended as well, along with her baby, and she gathers all of her strength to try to escape the labor camp and find freedom. When she encounters unthinkable tragedy, she takes control of her life as never before. Danuta emerges as a natural heroine from the first page, coming of age quickly in a time of war and loss. Her gumption and sassiness mark her as a strong character who stands up for herself even in the most threatening circumstances. Overall, Koenig delivers an unforgettable story that melds historical fact with superior fiction.
A fine World War II-era historical novel that breathes life into a long-gone era with its timeless characters and exciting conflicts.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481820059
Page Count: 354
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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