Despite some occasionally wooden dialogue, Zackheim gives us a poignant glimpse into the tensions and anxieties of prewar...
More than 50 years after the events recounted, a reporter reminisces about her life in Europe prior to the outbreak of World War II.
Although, or perhaps because, she was born and raised in Nevada, Rosie Manon craved another kind of life—more adventurous and meaningful than the one she’d known as a child. Her father was Catholic and her mother Jewish, although the latter lived in denial of her religious background and tried to keep Rosie from this part of her identity. In 1933, after a stint as a reporter with the New York Courier, Rosie seeks a transfer to its Paris office and finds herself the only woman on the staff and particularly ill-treated by her editor, Ramsey, an intolerant bigot who nevertheless recognizes Rosie’s talent. She styles herself R. B. Manon and becomes a tough-skinned reporter, eventually moving to Berlin, obviously a perilous place for her. There, she falls in love with Leon Wolff, a gifted engraver (and forger of documents) who, against his will, uses his talents on behalf of the Reich. Rosie and Leon carry on a surreptitious affair, but life eventually gets too dangerous, and Rosie reluctantly moves back to Paris. One sidelight of her life involves the murder of her cousin, Stella, the daughter of Rosie’s beloved Aunt Clara, and Rosie’s reporting on the outcome of the trial. Rosie lives through the horrors of Kristallnacht and, two years later, through the fall of Paris, losing track of Leon and only toward the end of the novel, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, finding out about his time in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and his postwar life with another woman.
Despite some occasionally wooden dialogue, Zackheim gives us a poignant glimpse into the tensions and anxieties of prewar Europe.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60945-179-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Much is made in these pages about the power of make-believe, and while the book falls short of magical, it’s still an...
The story behind the story that became the legendary movie The Wizard of Oz.
Letts (The Perfect Horse, 2016, etc.) builds her historical novel around Maud Gage Baum, the high-spirited wife of L. Frank Baum, who wrote the original Wizard of Oz books. In one of two intercut narratives, the 77-year-old Maud, who’d exerted a strong influence on her late husband, appears on the set of the movie in 1938; there, she encounters 16-year-old Judy Garland—cast as Dorothy—among others. The second narrative opens in Fayetteville, New York, in 1871 and traces Maud’s life from age 10: her girlhood as the daughter of an ardent suffragette; her brief time at Cornell University—she was one of the first women admitted there; her early marriage to Baum, an actor at the time; and the births of their four sons. Frank, a dreamer, was not so talented at making money, and the family endured a hardscrabble, peripatetic life until he scored as a writer. This part of the story is dramatic and sometimes-poignant, though it goes on a bit. (Read carefully, and you can spot some elements that made their ways into the books and movie.) The Hollywood part is more entertaining even if some of it feels implausible. Maud did meet Judy Garland and attend the premiere of the film in real life. But in the book she tries to protect and nurture Garland, who was at the mercy of her abusive stage mother and the filmmakers and was apparently fed amphetamines to keep her weight down. And while it’s true the movie’s best-loved song, “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” was almost cut at the last minute, the book has Maud persuading studio chief L.B. Mayer to keep it in.
Much is made in these pages about the power of make-believe, and while the book falls short of magical, it’s still an absorbing read.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-62210-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.
Veteran Godwin’s latest (Grief Cottage, 2017, etc.) tracks a half-century friendship between two very different yet oddly compatible women.
The dean and dorm mistress of Lovegood College pair Feron Hood and Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, hoping that sunny, outgoing Merry will be a steadying influence on Feron, who has recently lost her alcoholic mother and fled from an abusive stepfather. The girls do indeed form a lasting bond even though Merry leaves after a single semester to run the family tobacco farm when her parents are killed in a plane crash. They have both taken their first steps as writers under the guidance of Literature and Composition teacher Maud Petrie, and during their mostly long-distance relationship, Feron will be goaded to write three novels by Merry’s occasional magazine publications; she is at work on a fourth about their friendship as the book closes. The two women rarely meet in person, and Feron is bad about answering letters, but we see that they remain important in each other’s thoughts. Godwin unfolds their stories in a meditative, elliptical fashion, circling back to reveal defining moments that include tragic losses, unexpected love, and nurturing friendships. Self-contained, uncommunicative Feron seems the more withholding character, but Merry voices one of the novel’s key insights: “Everyone has secrets no one else should know” while Feron reveals essential truths about her life in her novels. Maud Petrie and Lovegood dean Susan Fox, each of whom has secrets of her own, continue as strong presences for Feron and Merry, who have been shaped by Lovegood more enduringly than they might have anticipated. Feron’s courtly Uncle Rowan and blunt Aunt Mabel, Merry’s quirky brother Ritchie, devoted manager Mr. Jack, and a suave Navy veteran with intimate links to both women are among the many nuanced characters drawn by Godwin with their human contradictions and complexities on full display. A closing letter from Dean Fox movingly reiterates the novel’s conjoined themes of continuity and change.
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63286-822-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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