A historically rigorous portrayal of a time of conflict, but that founders as literary drama.
In Miller’s historical novel, a young man is pulled into the Revolutionary War after his sibling is murdered.
In 1776, Josiah Hartford becomes a soldier “quite by accident” after his 16-year-old brother, Patrick, is killed by British soldiers invading Concord in the Massachusetts colony. He joins the Continental Army, bristling with a desire for revenge, and particularly distinguishes himself as a swordsman at Breed’s Hill. Josiah is a troubled man; he got a girl pregnant out of wedlock in Boston, and she subsequently died in childbirth. Later, both of his marriage proposals to another woman, Mercy Willingham, are summarily rejected. Meanwhile, his family is denounced as traitorous and sent to prison by his oldest friend, Hugo Chamberlain, a jealous rival who becomes a captain in the British Army. Josiah finds love again with another woman, Violet, but the relationship is fraught; she’s a sex worker with a checkered past—her mother and father were murdered by pirates, and she was sold into sexual slavery. Josiah is deeply drawn to her but also reluctant to fully commit to their relationship—a predicament depicted in blandly sentimental terms by author Miller, whose prose is earnest but anodyne: “The way Violet clung to him like she never wanted to let him go, the sweetness of her embrace when she gave herself to him, his own feelings of desire—these had a hold on him so strong that he wondered if anything could break it.”
Over the course of the novel, Miller displays a knowledge of the historical material that’s magisterial as he later presents an astute, as well as vivid, tableau of the war in New York, as well as the colony’s strategic significance. Also, his account of the role of Hessian mercenaries is rigorously researched, as is his treatment of the conditions of prisoners of war at the time. After Fort Washington is taken by the British, Josiah is captured and compelled to participate in a “savage, animalistic way of life” whose brutality the author portrays with a great deal of power. However, the book as whole is overly melodramatic; even the depiction of George Washington feels hyperbolic. Josiah is overawed when he first meets him: “He wondered if Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar had had this effect on people.” Likewise, dramatic speeches and declarations abound throughout the text, which feels like theatrical performance for a stage production, as when Josiah stands to his Hessian captors: “You crossed an ocean to fight in a war that has nothing to do with you. You butcher men who try to surrender. You loot and rape and burn. This country is going to swallow you up and spit you out, and you’ll never see your dear, civilized Fatherland again.” Furthermore, the plot is predictable, as it’s obvious from early on exactly how the novel will reach its dramatic crescendo and which two characters will be involved in it.
A historically rigorous portrayal of a time of conflict, but that founders as literary drama.Pub Date: March 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781685131623
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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