An often gripping novel whose fine characterization and supernatural aspects keep it afloat.
Beautiful seas hold hidden dangers for a variety of ship passengers in Kemp’s historical adventure novel.
In this companion book to her series of novels about immortal 18th-century magician Jonas Celwyn, the author introduces an engaging group of characters. Celwyn himself appears in a cameo at the beginning, pointing Richard Shaw, an investigator for Lloyd’s of London, toward a peculiar group of pirates. Shaw goes to Rio de Janeiro in 1851 to solve the mystery of why so many ships are disappearing in the southern hemisphere. He quickly does so, but becomes a prisoner on the Hussar, Capt. Peech’s pirate ship, which sails the Atlantic Ocean and terrorizes other vessels. In the Pacific, the American passenger ship Passat has as a passenger singer Cassandra Coulter, who’s fleeing a scandal. She develops an attraction to first officer Jack Browne. Another person onboard is psychic Christian Morse. It’s not all smooth sailing on the Passat, however: First, a passenger is murdered; then the ship faces unexpected troubles on All Hallows Eve and survivors struggle to stay alive. Later, as an American naval vessel hunts for the missing Passat, a showdown looms between the passenger ship and the Hussar, leading to a bizarre conclusion with mythological elements. Still, Kemp deserves credit for keeping readers off-balance. The novel often feels like a volume of maritime history with a little murder mystery thrown in, but the author shakes things up with mysterious and monstrous details; for example, her Cape of Good Hope is a magical and dangerous place. Kemp also presents a winning cast, led by Cass, her narrator aboard the Passat; standouts include alcoholic fellow passenger Mrs. Pentifax (“her words slurred together to keep from falling apart,” Cass observes) and stodgy Capt. McQuistan. As the body count rises, the murderer’s identity quickly becomes evident through a simple process of elimination, but that’s a minor quibble. Overall, Kemp successfully weaves together unusual elements into an enthralling yarn.
An often gripping novel whose fine characterization and supernatural aspects keep it afloat.Pub Date: June 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-1644508145
Page Count: 244
Publisher: 4 Horsemen Publications
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2023
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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