In 1944, Dart and Tamar, code names for two undercover operatives for Britain’s Special Operations Executive, parachute into Holland to reorganize the Dutch resistance movement. In 1955, a 15-year-old British girl named Tamar receives a box from her grandfather who has committed suicide. In it are clues to her grandfather’s past and her own identity, but she must go on a journey to make sense of the clues. In Peet’s Carnegie Medal–winning work, he tells the interwoven stories of Tamar the spy and Tamar the teenager in beautifully visualized episodes. Meticulously crafted scenes develop this long, complex and elegant work that is both a historical novel and a reflection on history—how a young girl’s life has been shaped by a past she never knew. Readers will be torn: They’ll want to slow down and savor the gorgeously detailed prose, but speed up to find out what happens next. Simply superb. (notes, acknowledgments) (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-7636-3488-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
A strong beginning that will leave readers hungry for more.
Subterfuge is the name of the game at an elite and secretive prep school.
Seventeen-year-old Italian-American November was born in August. Though she tragically lost her mother at age 6, she has an enviable life in small-town Connecticut, a strong relationship with her dad, and a mentor in her Aunt Jo. That is until, due to a family emergency, her father sends her away to a covert boarding school. Instead of mathematics and literature, students at the Academy Absconditi learn how to wield weapons both physical and psychological, and history is taught so they might manipulate the future. Guileless November quickly allies herself with her studious Egyptian roommate, Layla, and Layla’s handsome brother, Ash. When a fellow student turns up dead, November must expose the truth, including her own connection to the victim and the influential Council of Families, while navigating a minefield of misinformation. The first-person narration is unreliable due to the protagonist’s ignorance of the society in which she moves, while surreptitious behavior by the supporting characters forces the reader to be as wary as November ought to be. Revelations are well-paced, though astute readers are apt to pick up several of the dropped clues (but some are dropped and not resolved). Red herrings or possible threads that will be woven into future plots? Anything is possible in this world of cloaks and daggers.
A strong beginning that will leave readers hungry for more. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-57908-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
A carefully researched, precisely written tour de force; unforgettable and wrenching.
Breaking away from Arthurian legends (The Winter Prince, 1993, etc.), Wein delivers a heartbreaking tale of friendship during World War II.
In a cell in Nazi-occupied France, a young woman writes. Like Scheherezade, to whom she is compared by the SS officer in charge of her case, she dribbles out information—“everything I can remember about the British War Effort”—in exchange for time and a reprieve from torture. But her story is more than a listing of wireless codes or aircraft types. Instead, she describes her friendship with Maddie, the pilot who flew them to France, as well as the real details of the British War Effort: the breaking down of class barriers, the opportunities, the fears and victories not only of war, but of daily life. She also describes, almost casually, her unbearable current situation and the SS officer who holds her life in his hands and his beleaguered female associate, who translates the narrative each day. Through the layers of story, characters (including the Nazis) spring to life. And as the epigraph makes clear, there is more to this tale than is immediately apparent. The twists will lead readers to finish the last page and turn back to the beginning to see how the pieces slot perfectly, unexpectedly into place.
A carefully researched, precisely written tour de force; unforgettable and wrenching. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4231-5219-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
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