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
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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