A routine World War II romance, Trenow’s debut, is distinguished by the author’s smooth-as-silk delivery.
Lily is in the twilight of life as she sorts through the remnants of her past at her rural British home, The Chestnuts. When her granddaughter finds a locked briefcase in a closet, she’s flooded with memories of her youth, including a guilty secret she’s harbored for many years. Lily’s story, told in hindsight, is the tale of a young woman who discovers love and purpose while learning the intricacies of the family business under the tutelage of Gwen, the assistant factory manager. As her friendship with Gwen deepens and the inevitability of war edges closer, Lily excitedly accompanies her brother to a party where she meets pilot Robert Cameron. He visits the family at The Chestnuts and persuades her father and brother to invest in machinery that will enable the mill to manufacture silk for parachutes. A wise venture, their business deal keeps the factory operating and enables the Verner family to sponsor three German refugees and to provide them with jobs and a cottage. Much to her father’s dismay, Lily rebuffs Robert’s romantic advances and falls in love with Stefan, one of the refugees. She’s heartbroken when England enters the war, her brother enlists in the RAF, and Stefan and the two other refugees are taken into custody and shipped to an internment camp in Australia. As the war rages, Lily becomes her father’s assistant and suddenly is thrust into the directorship, which she manages with Gwen’s assistance. She and Stefan have kept their love alive via post, and when he returns to England, now called Stephen Holmes, their romance strengthens. The story takes a predictable path and ends on a too-perfect note, but nevertheless, it’s worth reading.
Trenow, who serves as a perfect example of the old adage that you should write what you know—she’s the descendant of generations of weavers—has penned a mellifluous, impeccably researched narrative.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7945-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
11
GET IT
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. 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
PROFILES
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
14
GET IT
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 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2022 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
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.
