A few liberties taken with the facts, but an excellent choice for readers interested in Anglo-Irish history.
Set in the 19th century, this novel follows the lives of Protestant Anglo-Irish landowners William Winship and his adopted son, James, mixing fictional characters with historical figures.
Well-written with a mix of action, adventure, politics and historical detail, McCarthy’s novel throws readers right into the action, as young William faces a duel over his fiancee. His opponent, Lord Sudbury, will, along with his family, remain a persistent nemesis to the Winships. Most of the book, however, focuses on James as he grows from boy to man. He’s actually Seamus Tobin, the son of William’s gardener. After multiple tragedies, including the deaths of Seamus’ parents and of William’s wife and son, William adopts Seamus, Anglicizes his name and sets him on the path of a proper Protestant gentleman, including stops at Eton and Oxford. James, however, has a penchant for trouble. After being caught in a basement nightclub, he’s expelled from Oxford through the Sudburys’ machinations. James opts for a military career to redeem himself, becoming an officer of the 10th Kings Lancers in India. There, he again falls in with the wrong sort, amasses debt and is drummed out in disgrace. He finally reaches his stride in the Jenkins Horse, an unconventional regiment whose members wear native garb and take on many Indian customs. While reining in his own shortcomings, he demonstrates valor in combat. Along the way, McCarthy portrays some fascinating, well-drawn characters: Oliver Locke, an outrageous dandy styled after Oscar Wilde; Reg Archer, a dashing, womanizing officer; Rajah Ali, an Anglophile Indian prince who delights in philosophical discourse; and Paddy Tierney, an Irish sergeant who speaks endlessly of taking back Ireland through land ownership. Ali and Tierney, in particular, help shape James’ budding support for Irish home rule. When James returns to Ireland, he enters politics as a Tory, but the racism of his own party and his growing respect for Charles Stewart Parnell, founder of the Irish Parliamentary Party, help solidify his political stance. James switches parties and is eventually chosen by Parnell to be his successor. What’s most impressive is the way James’ views on Irish independence develop—slowly, logically and realistically, either through significant interactions with other characters or his own observations.
A few liberties taken with the facts, but an excellent choice for readers interested in Anglo-Irish history.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1475263022
Page Count: 452
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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