A worthy addition to WWII resistance literature.
Historical novelist Smith (Scarred, 2016, etc.) relates the heroic efforts of one extraordinary woman during World War II.
In June 1940, 24-year-old Belgian Andrée “Deedee” de Jongh is working as a nurse’s aide in a hospital in occupied Brussels. Her patients are British soldiers, injured near Dunkirk. After they’re healed, the soldiers are collected by the Nazis and shipped to work camps in Germany. One day, Deedee performs an act of defiance, pouring a foul-smelling solution onto the bandages of a nearly healthy patient, which leads the Germans inspecting the ward to overlook her young charge. She soon devises a plan to rescue more British soldiers, including downed airmen, and get them back to England so that they may fight again. The intricate path to freedom includes safe houses from Belgium to southern France, employing master forgers to create appropriate documents, and a particular man, Florentino Goikoetxea, who, together with Deedee, guides the soldiers across the forbidding Pyrenees by foot. The British government agrees to provide financial support, giving Deedee the code name “Postwoman.” By the time Deedee is captured by the Gestapo in January 1943, she and other members of the resistance movement have saved hundreds of lives. This novel’s historical elements are verifiable: the real Deedee was, in fact, formally recognized by King George VI of England for her deeds. But Smith’s imagination supplies many of the secondary characters as well as the hint of romance between Deedee and one of her fliers. The prose often lacks emotional flourish, but its consistent reportorial tone keeps the story on track and maintains its quick pace. Indeed, some passages are succinctly chilling; for example, here’s Smith’s description of Deedee seeing herself in the mirror for the first time after a two-year imprisonment in the Ravensbruck work camp: “she was looking at a dirty, gray-haired, shriveled old hag....She only saw a cadaver.”
A worthy addition to WWII resistance literature.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 97819790092036
Page Count: 242
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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