Historical fiction that reads like epic fantasy. Great stuff.
Sex, intrigue and betrayal in the last days of the reign of Phillip the Fair of France.
After losing a lawsuit to his aunt, the Countess Mahaut, 14th-century French nobleman Robert III of Artois feels cheated out of lands and a title that he feels should rightfully be his. He decides to take revenge against his aunt via her two daughters and her young cousin, who are married to the king’s three sons. Unfortunately for them, Robert is aware that Marguerite, Mahaut’s cousin, and Blanche, her daughter, are currently having affairs with two young gentlemen at court, while Jeanne, another daughter, helps to facilitate their trysts. Robert hatches a plot to expose the affairs, aided by his cousin Isabella, who also happens to be Phillip the Fair’s daughter, unhappily married to King Edward II of England. But if the plot succeeds, the succession of the throne of France, and thus the realm itself, could be thrown into chaos. Hanging over all of this is the curse of the Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templar, Jacques De Molay, who, while burning at the stake, used his dying breath to curse his tormentors, including King Phillip, to die by the end of the year. Druon, who himself died in 2009, captures the times in this, the first of a seven-book series about the descendants of Phillip the Fair and the start of the Hundred Years' War, which was originally published in French in the 1950s and ’60s. The level of historic detail is astounding, and Druon masterfully brings his characters to life. Much of this book is presumably designed to set the stage for the rest of the series, and as a result, dozens of players are introduced, which can be overwhelming. Druon helpfully includes a detailed list of characters, though, as well as a family tree, to help readers untangle the often complicated familial and political relationships. Readers who do so will be richly rewarded.
Historical fiction that reads like epic fantasy. Great stuff.Pub Date: March 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-00749126-1
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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