A challenging but politically and morally astute take on the emotional impact of war.
The accidental leader of a Polish dissident group recalls his experiences in love and battle during World War II.
In the novel, first published in 1982, prize-winning Polish author Brandys (1916–2000) argues that relationships, particularly in times of political resistance, are always shot through with confusion and ambiguity. In the days before WWII, the narrator, Tom, is a Warsaw law student enchanted by Tola, an actress. Though she’s already committed to a lover, the two eventually strike up a sexual relationship of their own, and in his urge to get closer to Tola, Tom pursues some acting work. As the Nazis occupy Poland, he goes one fateful step further: To keep Tola from becoming embroiled in the real resistance, he invites her to join a resistance group he invented called Rondo (a name pulled from a Chopin piece). Through a series of miscommunications, the fake organization becomes real enough: Tom begins performing legitimate work feeding information to British intelligence forces, leading to more romantic byways, confused identities and, as the war draws to a bloody close, a body count. The novel's opening pages seem to suggest a comedy of errors, or at least an unreliable narrator: The narrative is structured as a letter to the editor, written by Tom in frustration with a newsmagazine article’s numerous inaccuracies about Rondo. But Tom’s outrage, constant digressions and shifts in time are designed more to expose dry ironies than get laughs. Brandys regularly underscores the connection between the theater in which Tom and Tola work and the “political theater” in which they participate, giving short shrift to their actual relationship, which eventually feels more like an excuse for the occasional mini-essay about the nature of political dissent. Brandys is deeply concerned about the ways politics and love tend to shape our identities, dourly concluding that both have a way of making us feel isolated. There’s no questioning the intelligence he brings to make that point, though his dense, digressive prose may test readers’ patience.
A challenging but politically and morally astute take on the emotional impact of war.Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60945-004-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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