An appealing, meditative tale about life during wartime.
In this debut historical novel, duty draws an Iowa farmer away from the land he loves.
In 1943, Valentin Schmitz, a brokenhearted flutist, spends his days working on his farm in Shelby County, Iowa. His friends and neighbors are heading off to war in Europe, but as a veteran, Schmitz has already served his country. Furthermore, the food he produces—ranging from vegetables to goat milk and honey—is considered vital to the war effort. Meanwhile, in Paris, a group of partisans wages war against the Nazi occupation and the collaborationist Vichy government. The alternating of settings from the homefront to Europe works well; the Iowa sections tend toward the slow and introspective, but the frequent returns to the tension and violence of war-torn France maintain momentum. This interweaving also provides comments on American military mobilization and the tension between those who are fighting abroad and those who stay at home. Ultimately, though, these two threads converge. Schmitz is of German descent through his father and French descent through his mother. His French relatives—who have been denied visas to immigrate to America—face persecution for their Jehovah’s Witnesses faith, a situation that drives Schmitz to take drastic action. The book is a philosophical novel as well as a historical one. Schmitz, an intriguing, educated character, displays deep concern with right and wrong. Sometimes the story’s allusions, such as Schmitz’s comparison of the dawn scene on his farm to the works of various 19th-century painters, are effective and evocative. At other times, the myriad dropped-in literary quotes are a bit much. Matthiessen can be heavy-handed in other ways as well: the author calls the selfish Shelby residents who refuse to look after their neighbors the Cains; a widowed young French partisan is named France Deschamps. Her husband Raymond’s dying words, “I love you, France,” take on an unsubtle double meaning. Still, the discussions of obligation, ethics, and resistance are quite nuanced and engaging. Readers should be eager to know what actions Schmitz takes in this and subsequent books.
An appealing, meditative tale about life during wartime.Pub Date: March 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62217-755-4
Page Count: 306
Publisher: WaveCloud Corporation
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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