An enjoyable historical novel that reveals a different side of a well-known region.
Pizzati (Venetian-English English-Venetian, 2007, etc.) offers a historical novel about the seventh-century birth of Venice, Italy.
Primo, 18, and Polo, 16, are brothers in a poor, rural farm family near the town of Opterg in the Byzantine Empire. Just before most of their clan are wiped out by invading Germanic Longobards, they’re told by their uncle, Licio, that they’re actually royalty, hidden away to keep them safe. The brothers are separated when they escape the aforementioned raid and end up adopted by families in small villages in part of the Byzantine Empire near the Adriatic Sea. Polo comes up with the idea of developing the villages adjoining the canals in the area that’s now Venice, hoping that the water will slow the Longobards. Polo also has the vision to see the value of increased trade between farmers and fishermen; the brothers reunite on one such trading mission. Polo goes on to become the first doge (leader) of Venice, with Primo as his primary shipbuilder; together they open trade routes to Africa and Asia. The novel also tells the story of fierce Longobard warrior Adalulf, who turns his back on his people in order to be with his youngest son, Aldo, and escape the Longobards’ new ruler, Grimwald, who vows revenge against Adalulf for causing the deaths of his two older brothers years before. Venetian historian Pizzati has created a well-developed, multigenerational cast of characters to populate his novel, a good percentage of whom are based on real-life historical figures. Still, despite their number, it’s simple to keep track of the many players. There’s plenty of treachery amid the politics and the battles, and Europe evolves as it faces the threat of invading Arabs. Pizzati’s work feels much shorter than its 500-plus pages, as the narrative rolls smoothly along over a period of decades. Two maps will help readers follow the major characters through the lands located around the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Black seas. Overall, Pizzati has crafted an incisive exploration of a lesser-known piece of history.
An enjoyable historical novel that reveals a different side of a well-known region.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5246-5891-5
Page Count: 514
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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