A step up from the usual genre romance, but only just; a literal bodice-ripper, and with swordplay, too.
For every Dauphin a D’Artagnan, and for every Sun King a monster in the attic. Thus Koen’s (Dark Angels, 2006, etc.) Bourbon-laced exploration of a tangled time in the French past.
Louis XIV was, famously, a strong believer in the divine right of kings—the right, that is to say, to do pretty much whatever they wanted to. In the case of this book, one of those things is to consolidate power in the wake of the all-too-welcome death of his father’s confidant and advisor, and now his, the Cardinal Mazarin, who lived a decidedly unchurchly life: “Reviled, feared, obeyed, Cardinal Mazarin was the most powerful man in the kingdom of France, first minister to the young king and lover, it was said, to the queen mother.” Another of those things is to sow a few wild oats, for Louis is still in his early 20s, though complicatedly married. Thus his dalliance with oo-la-la bumpkin Louise de la Baume le Blanc, which, to the delight of mademoiselle and roi alike, gets all hot and heavy: “The chemise was gone; she had no idea how, and he touched her breasts, and she closed her eyes.” Louis pleases Louise, apparently, for she now thinks of him as “a demigod, not only to her, but to all the kingdom.” But Louis, attentive though he may be, has bigger fish to fry, among them the quest to discover the identity of the weird kid in the iron mask who keeps turning up outside the city walls, as well as to crush another advisor for various effronteries and audacities. All in a day’s work for a king, but sometimes not easy for Koen to package neatly, since the exposition is often clumsy, as when she explains what the heck a dauphin is, anyway. That said, it’s a story that pretty well tells itself, largely based on historical fact, and with departures from the historically known that don’t seem too outlandish, iron mask and all.
A step up from the usual genre romance, but only just; a literal bodice-ripper, and with swordplay, too.Pub Date: June 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-71657-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
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
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