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THE JONKHEER'S WIFE

Name: THE JONKHEER'S WIFE
Author: John Landrum
ISBN: 978-1434317780

by John Landrum ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 23, 2007

An uneven but often thought-provoking reflection on WWII history.

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Landrum’s debutnovel tells a World War II–era story of compassion and illicit love.

German Col. Erwin Schell is sent to occupied Holland in 1940 to persuade young Dutchmen that the Third Reich’s National Socialism is the supreme philosophy for the world: “[T]he democracies crumble like paper,” he says. He sets up his headquarters in a farmhouse occupied by Sophia and her son, who have been trying to cope ever since Sophia’s husband, Willem, went missing. Schell and his unit largely behave impeccably toward the local populace, although they do execute Resistance saboteurs. The narrative then jumps forward a couple of years, and it turns out that Willem has joined up with American forces training for the upcoming Normandy landings. In Holland, Sophia becomes closer to the German colonel, but she’s also leading a double life. Schell’s faith in the decency of the conquering German race is shaken by evidence of mass deportations of Jews and the death squads in Russia. At the same time, his devotion to Sophia is severely tested with the arrival of the SS, who are eager to inflict their own brand of education. “Pain forces the acceptance of reality,” says an SS officer. “Have you ever thought that people in pain are the only ones you can really trust?”The Allied forces slog through Europe and Willem joins the paratroop drop at Arnhem to get back to his homeland and family; his wish is fulfilled, but in a very different fashion than the way he’d planned. In this fine historical tale, Landrum tacks away from the usual formula of equating all Germans with Nazis. Elegantly written and interlaced with little-known facts, the novel effectively portrays the humanity of German officers. However, the plot does contain some very unlikely coincidences, particularly involving encounters between the main characters, which weaken this remarkable effort. There are also some flat emotional reactionsthat don’t always bring across the terror, shock and even joy that people may experience in wartime. However, the narrative tension is nicely handled, cranking up the pace and keeping the ending in doubt.

An uneven but often thought-provoking reflection on WWII history.

Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2007

ISBN: 978-1434317780

Page Count: 304

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: June 11, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

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An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.