A historically authentic and intelligently crafted period drama that’s romantically stirring.
In this historical novel set in 18th-century France, the mistress of a powerful aristocrat becomes caught between her principles and prosperity.
Henriette d’Augustin is one of several mistresses kept by Duc Hugo d’Amboise and, as a result, lives a life of comfortable leisure in his chateau with her daughter, Solange. But the Duc becomes infatuated with his most recent romantic addition, Letitia du Massenet, “ravishing and virginal,” who “possesses an uncommon wit for a girl of eighteen.” The Duc desperately pines for a son, one thing his wife, Charlotte, despite years of effort, has proven unable to give him. She feels predictably threatened by Letitia’s hold on her husband. Charlotte is encouraged by Madame Céline de Poitiers, another mistress who is worried that she too will be cast aside and left penniless, to conspire against Letitia. Their collaborative efforts grow increasingly diabolical, all the more so after Letitia becomes pregnant. Charlotte recruits the help of Romain de Villiers, an old friend and tarot reader with whom she engages in an illicit romance. Murdoch (Stone Circle, 2017) deftly portrays the unenviable way in which Henriette becomes entangled in the web of Charlotte’s campaign to ruin Letitia. Henriette wants to defend Letitia, who is sorely dependent on the Duc for funds, but is wary of crossing Charlotte, for whom loyalty is a zero-sum game. Henriette has her livelihood, reputation, and daughter to protect as well as a closely guarded secret that, if uncovered, could spell her downfall. The author expertly re-creates high-society France at the beginning of the 18th century—this is a well-researched and historically valid depiction. In addition, she skillfully keeps the plot a tensile cord of suspense, revealing and concealing just enough to keep readers immersed and guessing. And while she doesn’t break any new literary ground, this book isn’t an overly sentimental iteration of the genre. Consider Henriette’s counsel to Letitia: “You see child, men are quite stupid and simple. They do not plan, devise, or see subtleties the way we do. This is our advantage.”
A historically authentic and intelligently crafted period drama that’s romantically stirring.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947548-22-0
Page Count: 253
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
© Copyright 2026 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.
