A well-written tale brings to life the twilight years of a captivating historical figure.
This historical novel focuses on Napoleon’s last years, awash in intrigue and poignant with loss.
After the defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon is exiled to St. Helena in the South Atlantic, about as far away from France as possible. He comes with a small entourage, among them his faithful valet, Marchand; Albine, Countess de Montholon, and her husband, Charles; and Napoleon’s childhood friend Francesco Cipriani. Napoleon’s nemesis on the island is the governor, Gen. Sir Hudson Lowe, a petty and vindictive bureaucrat. The five years on St. Helena are filled with Napoleon’s longings, chiefly that he will likely never again see his young son, “the Eaglet,” who was spirited off to Vienna by his mother, Marie Louise. These are years of treachery—an underlying theme is Napoleon’s lifelong realization that he can never completely trust anyone—and plots to escape or seek medical release that, as readers know, will come to naught. The narrative consists of those parts focusing on Napoleon, those sections related by Albine, and excerpts from the novella Clisson et Eugénie that the former leader worked on his whole life. The novella is fleshed out by Rodenberg, who deserves kudos as a rigorous researcher and gifted writer. Two characters really stand out in this intricate tapestry: Napoleon (no surprise) and Albine. Napoleon comes across as imperious when need be but also kind and unpretentious, reflecting his humble beginnings on Corsica. And Albine is a true wonder. Good at heart, she is the classic survivor. She always has a crust of bread in her pocket—a very nice touch—and is not above petty thievery and the useful lie. She is also Napoleon’s mistress and bears him a daughter, Joséphine, who, alas, dies some months after Albine makes it back to Europe. And then there’s Tobyson, the little boy who adores Napoleon and is a stand-in, in a way, for the Eaglet. The little acolyte brings out the best in the fallen emperor. An afterword helpfully separates fact from fiction.
A well-written tale brings to life the twilight years of a captivating historical figure. (acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-016-1
Page Count: 393
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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