Another medieval tale from Cadnum—this one set in 1100 and centered on the killing of William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror. Historians disagree about whether the king’s death was an assassination or a hunting accident. The author offers an answer, but he wraps it in a slow-moving, unsuspenseful story that is more about the Norman oppression of the English than any specific character or event. He also has two characters duking it out for the role of protagonist: Simon, a young half-Norman, half-English minor noble caught in the clash of cultures; and the king’s veteran, fiercely loyal marshal Roland, weary after years of bloodshed but never shy about creating more. Of the two, Roland is the more vividly drawn. Simon isn’t entirely a passive observer but he does more reacting than acting; his motives are no more clear to readers than they are to him, and his later, closing encounter with a beautiful noblewoman in Normandy gives the resolution a Disney-esque cast. Cadnum’s novels about the Crusades, for all their flaws, are considerably more compelling. (foreword) (Historical fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-670-06331-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
What dreams would lead a 16-year-old to leave her safe home in Arlington, Iowa, and take a chance on a homestead claim in Montana? Hattie Brooks, an orphan, is tired of being shuttled between relatives, tired of being Hattie Here-and-There and the feeling of being the “one odd sock behind.” So when Uncle Chester leaves her his Montana homestead claim, she jumps at the chance for independence. It’s 1918, so this is homesteading in the days of Model Ts rather than covered wagons, a time of world war, Spanish influenza and anti-German sentiment turning nasty in small-town America. Hattie’s first-person narrative is a deft mix of her own accounts of managing her claim, letters to and from her friend Charlie, who is off at war, newspaper columns she writes and even a couple of recipes. Based on a bit of Larson’s family history, this is not so much a happily-ever-after story as a next-year-will-be-better tale, with Hattie’s new-found definition of home. This fine offering may well inspire readers to find out more about their own family histories. (acknowledgments, author’s note, further reading) (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-73313-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
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