An interesting, if painful, depiction of World War I from the losing side.
A young Englishman is banished to Germany in 1912 and becomes a cavalry officer, but his love for his newly adopted homeland puts him on the losing side of World War I.
The first volume of Alexander’s already-published Schellendorf quartet (The Versailles Legacy, The English General and The Ghosts of War continue the story through the end of World War II) follows the transformation of 18-year-old Eric Foster, son of an unyielding English judge and a German woman, into Erich von Schellendorf, officer in the German army during World War I. Eric’s father will countenance no career for his son except law, and when Eric fails his classes at Cambridge and puts himself at risk of a social scandal, the young man is sent off to Heidelberg to complete his studies. There, Eric is befriended by Gerdt von Wittingen, son of a minor Prussian baron and colonel of a cavalry regiment, who introduces him to the military cadre at the university. Soon, Eric has fallen in love with both the military life and Gerdt’s sister Brigitte, whom he nicknames Britt. The elder von Wittingens smile on the match and assist Eric, both overtly and behind the scenes, to defy his father and remain in Germany. He takes his mother’s name of von Schellendorf—a prized military connection—and changes his given name to the Germanic “Erich.” But just as life seems about to blossom for Erich, the onslaught of war destroys everything he has come to love: The gentle baroness finally succumbs to tuberculosis, the baron descends into dementia, Gerdt is killed in battle, and Erich is trapped in a desk job while Britt is left on her own to deal with the intolerable burdens of hospital work, the administration of a large estate and her father’s madness. This is an often difficult novel to read since readers will have the distinct feeling things won’t end well. However, there’s also a problem with the story itself in that virtually every conflict takes place off-stage. Not only does Erich, the potentially brilliant soldier, see very little action, but the real story seems to be the rotting from within of the von Wittingen family—an apt metaphor for the collapse of their society. But Erich is rarely there to see it happen; he is only told about things after the fact. He labors to make his own way in the world only to inevitably discover that there are forces manipulating him behind the scenes, from family and friends to generals he has never met. Readers might hope that in subsequent installments, Erich can take charge of at least some aspects of his life.
An interesting, if painful, depiction of World War I from the losing side.Pub Date: July 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500574734
Page Count: 366
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2014
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
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 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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