Ridiculously entertaining. If the movie people don’t snap this one up, somebody’s asleep at the switch.
In his ongoing crusade to reanimate tales of adventure set in days of yore, Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, 2007, etc.) offers an ebullient yarn that blithely defies probability, while plundering from innumerable semi-literary sources.
Originally serialized in the New York Times Magazine (January-May 2007), it’s a story that moves from a caravansary in the Caucasus, along the legendary Silk Road traveled by merchants and adventurers, to the royal city Atil, stronghold of the Khazars, but presently occupied by the usurper, Buljan, who had murdered its rightful rulers. We learn all this through the efforts of the eponymous “gentlemen”: an Abyssinian soldier of fortune, Amram, and a cadaverous Frankish opportunist, Zelikman, who possesses the skills of an apothecary and the soul of an emotionless killer. Living by their wits (e.g., staging fights to the death and absconding with money wagered by gullible spectators), they encounter a beardless young man, Filaq, who’s the only survivor of his family’s slaughter by Buljan, and who, after initially mistrusting Zelikman and Amram, enlists them in pursuit of the throne that is rightfully his. Eyebrows will arch at the many twists and turns, (not so surprising) surprises and reversals, as the trio proceed toward Atil, joining forces with an army of (Arsiyah) mercenaries weary from battle with Northern invaders (who appear to be in collusion with the nefarious Buljan), then a family of Jewish (Radanite) traders confident that wholesale slaughter need not interfere with business as usual. Nobody is quite who he seems to be. But the worst villains experience comeuppance, in the gratifying resolution of a complaint voiced by, of all people, Buljan: “There was no hope for an empire that had lost the will to prosecute the grand and awful business of adventure.” That might be the voice of Chabon addressing his readers.
Ridiculously entertaining. If the movie people don’t snap this one up, somebody’s asleep at the switch.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-345-50174-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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