An engaging tale offers a bit of farce, a touch of love, and quixotic characters.
The brutality of war meets the theater of the absurd in this historical novel set in Texas during its rebellion against Mexico.
In 1835, Texas, still a part of Mexico, is a place where Americans go for a fresh start and European immigrants arrive, hoping to make their fortunes from promotional offerings of vast tracts of land. The two central protagonists, “Señorita” Charlotte Vernon, originally from Surrey, England, and Harry Birchfield, a cobbler from the Whitechapel section of London, alternate narration, she aligned with the Mexicans and he with the Texans. And occasionally, even Davy Crockett gets to helm a few lively and sardonic chapters from the Alamo. Charlotte is a 30-something single artist, rescued from a New Orleans jail by Captain of Artillery Andreas Gerber, a Swiss mercenary hired by the Mexican army. Andreas brings Charlotte to Texas with him, where she is conscripted to paint battle scenes portraying the Mexicans in all their military glory. Meanwhile, Harry just wants to claim his acres of land and establish a cotton plantation that will bring him a life of leisure. He did not anticipate war with Mexico would be part of the bargain. But he takes charge of a decrepit cannon, originally given to the citizens of Gonzales by the Mexican government for defense against Comanche raiders. Now the Mexicans want it back; the ragtag volunteer Texas army wishes to keep it for the revolution; and Harry winds up a recruit. In this offbeat and melancholy tale, Giesser has a fine ear for language, and his characters speak in the jargon and cadence suiting their origins and stations. Readers get to know them primarily through dialogue filled with quips and musings. But the audience will have to pay close attention to follow the timeline. The novel opens in June 1836, just months before the book ends. Then it jumps back to 1835, filling in bits and pieces gradually, always holding back enough to keep things intriguing, albeit sometimes confusing. Although there is plenty of history and a smattering of politics to be found here, this is essentially an engrossing, character-driven tragedy.
An engaging tale offers a bit of farce, a touch of love, and quixotic characters.Pub Date: May 7, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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