A historical novel with vivid descriptions of its time and place but that would have benefited from some streamlining.
In the early 1860s, an orphaned Swedish girl comes of age in what becomes the Idaho Territory in this latest installment in the High Valley Home series.
The Larson family of Swedish immigrants first appeared in Dorris’ Sheepeater (2009, etc.), which focused on Erik Larson, a boy who was adopted by Indians. Here, Dorris turns to Erik’s sister, Katrine, who at 9 years old becomes separated from her family during their wagon-train trek west from Minnesota to the high valley north of Fort Boise. The kind Olafson family takes her in, however, and they treat her like a daughter. The immigrants face all the usual dangers and trials of breaking new ground with few supplies in a new country, but they slowly improve their rough lean-tos, sow crops, acquire livestock, set up schools of a kind for their children, and so on. Still, challenges and setbacks arise, including hailstorms, fires, mountain lions, and illness. But there are rewards, as well, including fertile ground, hot springs, and good neighbors. Katrine, meanwhile, grows up as a typical girl of her time and place, doing chores, going to school, playing with friends, and looking forward to special treats on such holidays as Midsummer’s Eve and St. Lucia’s Day. As she’s about to turn 15, Katrine stands on the brink of adulthood, engaged to marry. Still, the small community has some tragedies, as well. Overall, this is a well-researched account that vividly shows the daily hard work and special difficulties of life for pioneer settlers. The descriptions of handmade chairs, floors, and other items are entertaining, and the focus on Swedish culture and the Idaho setting enrich the story, taking it beyond what readers may already know from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s famous Little House books. However, excessive repetition slows the novel down and dulls its effectiveness; for example, readers are informed many times over that Katrine’s typical chores are getting water and gathering wood. The prose can also be overly melodramatic at times (“Katrine’s heart caught”; “Katrine felt her world going black”; “A numbing ache filled Katrine”).
A historical novel with vivid descriptions of its time and place but that would have benefited from some streamlining.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-2006-3
Page Count: 414
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
