Gorgeous prose and unforgettable characters combine to make a literary masterpiece.
An epic novel brings complex 20th-century Korean history to life.
In this extraordinary historical novel, debut author Kim weaves together the story of friends and rivals trying to survive and thrive from the era of the Japanese occupation of Korea to the political purges of the mid-20th century. The book begins with a Korean hunter encountering a tiger in the snow when he is captured by a lost squad of Japanese soldiers. With its near-mythic evocations of several kinds of beasts, the prologue establishes the themes of the book. The majority of the novel follows Jade, whose impoverished farming family sends her as a young girl to work as a servant for a courtesan. Jade observes the rivalries of other girls in training, particularly Luna, the spoiled favored daughter of the head of the household, and Lotus, the spirited but plainer younger sister. Thanks to her intelligence and resourcefulness, Jade will grow up to become a celebrated courtesan and movie star in Seoul, where she and the two sisters end up as adults. Together they encounter various men, including the revolution-minded MyungBo, an intellectual fighting for Korean independence; the ever loyal JungHo, the leader of a street gang of orphaned boys; the slick and wealthy patron SungSoo; and the ambitious rickshaw driver HanChol. Jade, Luna, and Lotus fall in love with men from very different backgrounds, but their love and loyalty are not always returned. Kim shows clearly how patriarchy harms these resourceful women in one of the novel's major themes. Late in the book a Japanese general will remark, "How such enormous beasts have flourished in this little land is incomprehensible." He is referring to tigers, but he might as well be talking about the humans who fight here, too.
Gorgeous prose and unforgettable characters combine to make a literary masterpiece.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-309357-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.
The true story of Axis diplomats detained in the U.S. at the start of World War II is transformed into a dazzling historical novel set at a sumptuous West Virginia hotel.
Bestselling YA fantasy author Stiefvater’s adult debut introduces a writer whose prodigious imagination and distinctive prose style have combined to create a novel that will remind readers of why they fell in love with reading in the first place. At its center is the captivating June Hudson, an erstwhile Appalachian orphan who was taken in by the wealthy Gilfoyle family, owners of the Avallon Hotel & Spa, a high-society retreat built over underground mineral springs. At his death, the patriarch bequeathed ownership to his playboy son, Edgar, but made June the general manager, as she had spent her life learning the business—and also shared with Gilfoyle Sr. a rare gift relating to the “sweetwater” springs, a fantastical element of this otherwise realistic novel. Aside from the magical waters and a few other fanciful details, Stiefvater’s fictional world is based on extensive research into high-end hotels of the period, creating a version of luxury so appealing that readers will wish they could check into the Avallon and stay on indefinitely. In fact, the novel revolves around the true meaning of luxury. To June, it has nothing to do with wealth; it is more connected to joy, and to the book’s title: “June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing. But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears, and hopes hid not in the words that were said, but in the ones that weren’t, and all these formed the core of luxury.” Also brilliantly managed is the rest of the ensemble cast: sexy FBI agents; June’s inimitable staff; the delegations of Japanese, Germans, and Italians detained at the hotel, some quite nasty, but among them a strange, special, totally silent child. And on top of all this, a delicious love story!
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593655504
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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