This meandering tale vividly drives home the unspeakable realities of American slavery.
A historical novel focuses on slavery in 18th-century America.
Elder presents Charleston, South Carolina (initially called Charlestown), in the late 1700s. America during this time is a harsh place. Whether one is tortured for being a suspected witch or punished for disagreeing with one’s master, violence is commonplace and brutal. Khat is a young African woman who has been brought to Charleston via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. She has visible scars that make her unattractive to most. Thanks to her grandmother the High Priestess En, Khat is a skilled cook and well versed in “the way” of the spirit. Want to see the plantation owner get a taste of some scorpion stings? Khat is the person to see. Nicholas is a fellow enslaved person who has suffered his own share of deprivations. As he ages, he has no qualms about dispensing retribution wherever and whenever he is able. He hardly blinks an eye when raping and murdering a sex worker. He has more than a few ideas about how to dispose of a man who has tormented him. Readers follow along as the lives of Khat, Nicholas, and others intersect in this unforgiving and often sexual landscape. From branding to breeding, the narrative pulls no punches with the horrors of slavery. Nicholas’ vigilante justice is no tamer. He very easily takes a spade to a man’s skull and, after three attempts, the “head is detached.” Such events keep the tale both lively and graphic. Scenes involving what is apparently a cult pledging fiery devotion to the Old Testament figure of Moloch add a sense of devilish mystery. But not all of the descriptions are compelling. For instance, Khat is “scared and repulsed” that she will be auctioned in South Carolina. Details of how she must serve food at the plantation (“Stay hidden until all the guests are seated. Then go collect the tea service and bring it back here”) do not add much to the story. Still, the intriguing plot will keep the audience wondering how things will ultimately play out. Readers know at the outset that emancipation is nearly a hundred years away. What will become of the likes of Khat and Nicholas in the meantime?
This meandering tale vividly drives home the unspeakable realities of American slavery.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982281-87-8
Page Count: 322
Publisher: BalboaPressUK
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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