A straightforward rendering of one woman’s spiritual journey.
A debut novel offers a Christian perspective on the eternal war between good and evil and how salvation remains a choice.
Jeriley O’Connor is thrilled for a fresh start. Longing to escape a dark past—a series of “mistakes” that are often referenced but never explained—she packs her bags and heads south to start a new job. On her first day in the unnamed picturesque beach town where she now lives, Jeriley spots the handsomest man she has ever seen. The next day they cross paths at the beach, and she is formally acquainted with Stephen, “an easy spirit” with “an uncanny calming effect.” Within a few hours, Jeriley also meets Adrian, a dangerously sexy bachelor with a wicked grin who works “in the business of procurement.” Little does she know, her suitors are actually representatives of God and the devil, battling on behalf of their masters for her soul. While Stephen fights with compassion and understanding, Adrian counters with seduction and bad-boy sex appeal. Stephen receives some help from Lydia Jordan, Jeriley’s assistant and a devout Christian. Just when he has finally convinced Jeriley to dig up her grandmother’s Bible, a meddlesome fallen angel named Zain orchestrates a horrible car accident that leaves her in a coma. Now, both Jeriley’s mortal life and eternal soul are in limbo, and it’s up to Stephen to convince her that “nothing could ever compare to the greatness and goodness of God the Creator.” In the spirit of religious parables, Jeriley is a sort of Everywoman, and Sweat elects to paint her life in broad strokes. For instance, her job on the “editing team” at a place called Donovan is characterized by “projects” and “paperwork.” It’s a device that works insofar as it limits the book’s focus to the religious message, but it may not satisfy readers looking for character development or elaborate plotlines. Furthermore, while Jeriley’s choice is clear by the story’s finish, other loose ends—like a main character’s fate—are left untied. For these reasons, this will likely please fans of Christian fiction but have limited crossover appeal.
A straightforward rendering of one woman’s spiritual journey.Pub Date: June 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-4182-7
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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