This well-crafted love story will draw in many readers and delight them.
A Georgian romance sequel portrays the social jostling, wrangling, love affairs, and subtle intrigues of a group of English aristocrats.
Field offers a smorgasbord of plots and subplots for readers’ delectation. Right off the bat, for example, Robert Church, Geoffrey Chatswell-Brawley’s half brother, must be disabused of the notion that his son, Harry, might become the Fourth Earl of Stoneleigh. Then the London season begins, and the lovely Joanna, daughter of Geoffrey, the Third Earl of Stoneleigh, and his wife, Anne, makes her debut in society. She is in love with the dashing Capt. Francis Hardwick of the Dragoons but first must suffer the advances of such men as the boring Lord Arundel, whose bride will become a duchess. And then Anne’s younger brother, Will, comes home from Barbados with a Black wife. This of course causes a veritable earthquake of consternation, not to mention pangs of conscience regarding these wealthy people’s connections to the slave trade. Will the love between Joanna and Hardwick prove stronger than any challenges, and will they live happily-ever-after? Field is quite enamored of this period and these characters. Some are foppish, shallow, or boorish, and she is happy to make fun of them. Others are kind and wise—think of the best people at Downton Abbey. The author does go on and on about costumes and décor, a staple of the genre, and there is more than a touch of the bodice-ripper here (Hardwick gazes at Joanna “with smoldering eyes”). Meanwhile, these elegant folks can tear up at the drop of a calling card. Still, any novel that is prefaced with not one but three aristocratic family trees clearly means business, and Field delivers. She displays a deft hand at character sketching. The outlandish—to modern sensibilities—becomes, if not believable, oddly enjoyable.
This well-crafted love story will draw in many readers and delight them.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73743-432-0
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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