An engaging, intricate horror tale that feels ripped from the pages of a penny dreadful.
An artist gets drawn into the domain of an enigmatic collector in this gothic novel.
In 1882, Miss Perdita Badon-Reed of Boston travels by riverboat down the Mississippi in order to take a teaching position in the tiny, French-inflected backwater of Ste. Odile. Over 40 years old, she just ran away from what was probably the last chance at a respectable marriage in order to pursue her dream career as a sculptor of statues. (That her erstwhile fiance is still reeling from the recent murder of his sister in France only adds to the scandal of her flight.) Perdita’s host in Ste. Odile is her uncle, the parish priest Father Tancred Condell, and her colleague at the school is the naïve but enthusiastic nun Sister Solana. The strange town has its share of characters. Some are tragic, like Marie Chardin, a woman soon to be hung for the murder of her own daughter and whom Perdita befriends out of charity. Some are inspiring, like the abandoned half Black, half Native American Anatolia Montes, one of Perdita’s young students who possesses an incredible talent for her age, even if her drawings often include visions that only she can see. But the most notable resident by far is Orien Bastide, the mysterious scion of the local lead-mining dynasty. Bastide is a philanthropist and art lover, one who eventually extends an invitation to Perdita to see his impressive collection. It is housed at his estate, Jardin Noir, named, as one character explains, for its distinctive flora: “The Black Garden. As I understand it, there has always been an abundance of black oak, black cherry, and black walnut trees, and many flowering plants with darker-hued blossoms. And I am told there is deadly nightshade.” It soon becomes clear that Bastide may be collecting more than art. But does Perdita have the sense to keep herself from becoming his next acquisition?
McFarland’s precise prose evokes the period without ever feeling too stiff or mannered, as here where Sister Solana gushes over Perdita upon meeting her: “A stone sculptor! What a time we are living in that a woman can claim such a profession! Mrs. Wollstonecraft would be proud, don’t you think? That is such a smart walking-about outfit you’re wearing. And that hat is perfect for the shape of your face!” Ste. Odile is richly rendered, a Cajun fever dream that blends nearly all the tropes of Southern and Continental gothic. The book’s fidelity to the literature that inspired it is both its strength and its weakness. The author has mastered the simmering miasma of Victorian horror fiction, whetting readers’ anticipation for terrible things that take chapters and chapters to arrive. The only problem is that when they do appear, they are in no way surprising. This is not a meta take on gothic horror, and McFarland does not have any modern tricks in store. But for those who love a good, old-fashioned, slow-burning novel of the occult, this one more than delivers.
An engaging, intricate horror tale that feels ripped from the pages of a penny dreadful.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951716-22-6
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Dark Owl Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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