A wooden biblical novel that falters on the level of storytelling.
Ganci novelizes the rise of King David in this Christian historical novel, the second in a series.
The popular warrior and outlaw David—son of Jesse, slayer of Goliath, and hated rival of Israel’s envious King Saul—is hiding out in the wilderness of Ziph with his army of loyal warriors. With the help of his priest, Abiathar, David consults his God, Yahweh, for guidance on how to survive and serve His will. With the help of Yahweh and his own natural wit and leadership abilities, David manages to keep his men alive and free while Saul becomes distracted by Israel’s perennial enemy: the Philistines. David and Saul finally strike a truce, but David isn’t ready to trust the king. “David pondered in his soul how many times Saul had repented of his obsession to seek his destruction. But Saul always returned, like a dog to its vomit, with hate and vengeance in his heart.” David decides that he and his men may actually be safer among the Philistines than among the Israelites. When Saul and his sons are killed in battle with the Philistines, David is crowned king of Judah and Israel, and the land seems like it may finally be at peace. However, an alluring woman named Bathshua—or Bathsheba, as she comes to be known—wins the young king’s affections, and his indiscretion forces him to make a terrible choice. David may be the anointed one, but can he actually be a better king than the tyrant Saul? Ganci writes in urgent, muscular prose that transforms the antiquated descriptions of the Bible into something closer to a fantasy novel: “David was stirred to his very core and overflowed with conflicting emotions. His best friend in all of creation, Jonathan, whom he loved more than his own life, was no more. Saul, the king of all Israel, had sought his life through desert waste and forest thicket. Now he lay dead—slaughtered by an infidel.” However, he largely fails in making these familiar characters feel any more human or relatable than they do in Scripture. The dialogue is stilted, and there’s a general lack of curiosity regarding the psychological or spiritual dimensions of his characters, whose motivations feel preordained and, ultimately, quite boring.
A wooden biblical novel that falters on the level of storytelling.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9978032-2-8
Page Count: 490
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2022
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
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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