A well-researched tale that mostly strikes a shrewd balance between thinking and fighting.
Violent tribal warfare and disagreements about dogma abound in a historical epic set in 17th-century Canada.
This sprawling novel by the Giller-winning Boyden (Three Day Road, 2005, etc.) alternates among three narrators. Bird is a Huron leader who strives to fend off attacks from enemy Iroquois while establishing a trading relationship with French settlers; Snow Falls is a young Iroquois woman captured by the Huron and claimed as a daughter by Bird; and Christophe is a young French Catholic priest, also captured by the Huron but determined to convert his keepers to Christianity. Boyden doesn’t explicitly signal who’s speaking in each chapter, but who’s who is quickly clear: Bird is sage but ruthless, Snow Falls, spirited and independent, and Christophe is prayerful yet frightened. And Christophe has good reason to be scared: One of his fellow missionaries has been badly tortured by the Huron, his hands now fingerless stumps, and Boyden includes plenty of harrowing scenes of the dayslong torture the tribes would inflict on each other. (In a cruel irony, the Huron term for it is “caressing.”) Yet the overall tone of the book is contemplative; violent scenes are matched by those about the nature of God in such a violent milieu, particularly in terms of Christophe’s mostly unsuccessful attempts to turn the Huron to the “great voice.” (“Orenda” is the life force the natives believe inhabits everything in nature.) For all the high-action savagery and brutality that Boyden details (even friendly lacrosse matches get bloody), the novel can feel slow and static, particularly when it cycles through each narrator’s perspective on a single incident. But the tighter prose in its climactic chapters gives the novel sharpness and lift.
A well-researched tale that mostly strikes a shrewd balance between thinking and fighting.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-35073-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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