A well-researched WWII novel that tackles compelling questions of family loyalty and broader ethics.
The life of a young German man is turned upside down by the outbreak of World War II in Graydon’s historical novel.
Growing up in Halbe, Germany, in the 1930s, Oskar Bachmann is surrounded by the echoes of the First World War. His father, a brilliant but brutal tyrant, was once a respected pilot in the German military but came home from the frontlines forever changed. He often beats poor Oskar within an inch of his life, but spares Oskar’s brother, Emil—because Emil is part of the Hitler Youth, an organization Oskar’s mother abhors (she hates all things associated with the Nazis) and forbids Oskar to join. As Germany descends into Hitler-led madness, Oskar’s best and only friend, an ingenious scholar, commits suicide after Nazis burn down his one-of-a-kind library. The violence around Oskar only intensifies while he is a student in Berlin, and his mother arranges for him to finish his studies in the relative safety of New York City. Stateside, Oskar is gifted with a lavish apartment and discovers that his mysterious “landlord,” Aleks, is also German, from the same town where Oskar’s father is now stationed as a pharmaceutical researcher—and he seems to know quite a bit about Oskar. When Herr Bachmann is mysteriously killed, Oskar must choose between loyalty to his family and country and commitment to his ethical center. Graydon explores compelling territory in this historical novel, shedding light on the young Germans who did not identify as Nazis yet found themselves caught up in fascist hysteria nonetheless. Oskar knows enough to see the truth (“The Nazis were adept at psychological tricks…[but] a bouquet of flowers at the centre of our table would not be enough to enhance my outlook”), but the bonds of family and country are a powerful siren song. The nuanced depiction of a seemingly “good” young man torn asunder by conflicting beliefs is where this novel really sings.
A well-researched WWII novel that tackles compelling questions of family loyalty and broader ethics.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781803782096
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Cranthorpe Millner Publishers
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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