A quiet and introspective novel of wartime adventure.
A teenage girl rescues a downed American pilot in World War II Norway.
In this historical novel, Kjeldsen (Tomorrow City, 2013) follows 15-year-old Kari Dahlstrøm as she sets out to help an American pilot who lands near her family’s farm in rural Norway, despite her misanthropic widowed father Erling’s protest that the incident is not their concern. Kari sneaks out on foot and locates the pilot, Maj. Lance Mahurin, tangled up in his parachute in a tree. After freeing him, she offers to take him to safety in Sweden. They eventually head off in a rickety cart pulled by Torden, the Dahlstrøm family’s horse. When Erling realizes Kari is gone, he sets out on her trail, as does Nazi officer Lt. Conrad Moltke, guided by informants willing to trade collaboration for personal benefit. The two men chase their targets across the treacherous Norwegian mountains. Kari and Lance contend with the dangers of ice and snow, as well as the ever-present threat of German soldiers, as they make their way to the Swedish border. Erling’s journey in their tracks is solitary, while Moltke’s pursuit is hampered by conflicts with his superiors and the men he commands. The narrative switches frequently among characters, providing readers with an understanding of the motivations of all involved. Despite the high drama and action-driven hunt, the story remains at its core a quiet one, focused on the well-developed, internal struggles of the characters and with the careful, evocative use of language (“The first faint smudges of dawn began to emerge on the horizon. At the onset, they were barely perceptible, little more than smears on a lampblack canvas”). Although the prose is strong, the grammar is less so, and repeated errors in proper noun possessive formation detract from the narrative. Kjeldsen’s writing benefits from a deep underlying knowledge, not only of World War II ranks and weaponry—though history buffs should appreciate the details—but also of farming techniques, the hazards of a winter trek through Scandinavian woods, and animal behavior (“After Torden slipped again, he pulled up and whinnied, refusing to proceed further until Kari dug her heels into his sides”). The book is less adept at bringing readers into its female protagonist’s mind; despite the challenges she faces on her odyssey, Kari’s thoughts consist disproportionately of her infatuation with Lance.
A quiet and introspective novel of wartime adventure.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9984657-2-2
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Grenzland Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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