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
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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