An informative, captivating tale of friendship, family, and virtue.
This debut historical novel portrays the lives of three women living in 17th-century Bavaria and the conflict that arises when the king of Sweden’s forces invade their state during the Thirty Years’ War.
Elphie and Marien are two young women who share an unbreakable friendship despite their very different backgrounds. Elphie, the daughter of peasants, is Marien’s servant and helps her own father farm in the village of Kallmunz. Marien is a member of the “lesser nobility”—her mother, Lilli, is the Baroness of Kallmunz and her maternal grandfather, an alumnus of the duke’s entourage of loyalists. In 1630, Marien and her family learn, while on a trip to the city of Regensburg, that the duke has requested the assistance of Kallmunz to strengthen his army against Swedish forces. The devastating effects of the Thirty Years’ War between the major powers of Europe spur huge changes in their community, and the lives of Elphie, Marien, and their families become complicated and strained. Pilkington focuses on the day-to-day activities and innermost thoughts of each of the characters, crafting an intimate, interconnected portrait of life in Bavaria during the late medieval period. Rich details, such as the farming practices of Elphie and her father, the muddy streets of the village during early spring days, and Lilli’s grand view of the lands from her fortress wall, vividly depict the human aspect of the Middle Ages that often gets lost in textbooks. The author also creates rounded, complex characters by juxtaposing their philosophical introspection against their rigid place in feudalism’s social hierarchy; for example, Elphie “understood that there was a tremendous difference between what she could achieve through her imagination, and the real world that confined her life.” Beautiful photographs, taken by the author during his travels through Germany, accompany the text. This novel will be an accessible read for anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of its medieval setting.
An informative, captivating tale of friendship, family, and virtue.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5116-7403-4
Page Count: 168
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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