Ball embroiders the record outlandishly, but what a ripping way to learn a history lesson.
An atmospheric tale of the mythmaking of a young queen.
Ball (Acorna’s Quest, 1998, with Anne McCaffrey) concentrates on Eleanor’s formative years in this densely detailed narrative, from age 15, in 1137, when her powerful father William died, leaving her and her younger sister vulnerable to predatory suitors, to age 30, when she manages to divorce the ineffectual King Louis of France and marry the young upstart of England, soon-to-be Henry II. Ball portrays Eleanor as a strong-willed, decisive character, who essentially chooses her own destiny as queen. “Love is for peasants,” she proclaims. “We make alliances.” With the death of her father, Eleanor eschews the marriage offer of a lesser noble and puts forth to her advisers the scheme of catching bigger fish, Louis the Fat’s son, and thus uniting the valuable lands of Aquitaine and Poitiers with France. Indeed, young Louis, who wanted only to spend his days in pious prayer in a monastery, but was yanked into line when his older brother Philippe was killed, reluctantly takes the lively teenager as his wife before growing to love her. Soon he is crowned king, and Eleanor his queen, and over many years two daughters are born, but no sons. As rumors of Eleanor’s adultery spread (she finds Louis a cold fish), she is coerced into joining Louis’s disastrous venture to the Holy Land to fight the infidels; Ball digresses on a truly fanciful venture with the queen’s extended entourage to Constantinople and the lush spectacle of Emperor Manuel’s court, where she learns for the first time in his arms “what sweetness could be between a man and a woman.” A meeting with impetuous, red-headed Henry, the teenaged son of King Geoffrey of England, whets the empire-making ambitions for both Henry and Eleanor, and their match is secretly sealed. The author here delivers several imperious, memorable characterizations.
Ball embroiders the record outlandishly, but what a ripping way to learn a history lesson.Pub Date: June 13, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-20533-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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