The abundant charm of the heroine and the heavily detailed historical background will hook readers and keep them hooked.
In ancient Rome, politics makes strange bedfellows—and lethal enemies in Davis' (Pandora’s Boy, 2018, etc.) latest.
It's the year 89. Emperor Domitian, a former general, is big on ceremony, particularly when it honors him. Seasoned investigator (and droll narrator) Flavia Albia enters his service with eyes wide open. To celebrate the return of the emperor from his military campaigns, not one but two celebrations known as Triumphs are planned, but the project manager, the hapless Gabinus, slows their progress when he plunges inconveniently from the Tarpeian Rock. His death might have been ruled a suicide if there hadn’t been a witness. So Flavia is nudged into discreetly finding out whether Gabinus was pushed. The timing is far from ideal, for Flavia should be tending her husband, Manlius Faustus, who’s been struggling to run his construction company ever since he was struck by lightning. Elderly witness Valeria Dillia insists that she saw a tussle but is hazy on other details and doesn’t want to testify under oath. Her tentative, perhaps unreliable evidence forces Flavia to delve uncomfortably deeper, questioning, among others, the renowned augur Larth and Gabinus’ meek deputy, Egnatius. A strange additional theory of the crime involves the Sacred Geese of Juno, whose aggression may have pushed Gabinus off the Rock, because you never know. Flavia’s investigation moves slowly. As she uncovers surprising connections, she finds herself uncomfortably shadowed by unsavory individuals with sinister agendas.
The abundant charm of the heroine and the heavily detailed historical background will hook readers and keep them hooked.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-15271-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility(2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The perils of country living are brought to light in a confidently executed novel.
Family bonds are twisted and broken in Jordan’s meditation on the fallen South.
Debut novelist Jordan won the 2006 Bellwether Prize for this disquieting reflection on rural America, told from multiple perspectives. After steadfastly guarding her virginity for three decades, cosmopolitan Memphis schoolmarm Laura Chappell agrees to marry a rigid suitor named Henry McAllan, and in 1940 they have their first child. At the end of World War II, Henry drags his bride, their now expanded brood and his sadistic Pappy off to a vile, primitive farm in the backwaters of Mississippi that she names “Mudbound.” Promised an antebellum plantation, Laura finds that Henry has been fleeced and her family is soon living in a bleak, weather-beaten farmhouse lacking running water and electricity. Resigned to an uncomfortable truce, the McAllans stubbornly and meagerly carve out a living on the unforgiving Delta. Their unsteady marriage becomes more complicated with the arrival of Henry’s enigmatic brother Jamie, plagued by his father’s wrath, a drinking problem and the guilt of razing Europe as a bomber pilot. Adding his voice to the narrative is Ronsel Jackson, the son of one of the farm’s tenants, whose heroism as a tank soldier stands for naught against the racism of the hard-drinking, deeply bigoted community. Punctuated by an illicit affair, a gruesome hate crime and finally a quiet, just murder in the night, the book imparts misery upon the wicked—but the innocent suffer as well. “Sometimes it’s necessary to do wrong,” claims Jamie McAllan in the book’s equivocal dénouement. “Sometimes it’s the only way to make things right.”
The perils of country living are brought to light in a confidently executed novel.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-56512-569-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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