A gripping peek into a bygone Italy and an astute look at the era’s prejudice.
A historical novel set in Italy at the end of the 18th century explores the plight of persecuted Jews and the possibility of religious tolerance.
Mirelle d’Ancona is a young Jewish girl in Ancona, Italy. Despite her family’s business success—her father owns a well-regarded ketubah workshop—she suffers from the same restrictions onerously placed on all Jews in Italy in 1796. She is prohibited from leaving the Jewish ghetto at night. And she cannot venture outside without wearing the yellow armband that marks her second-class citizenship, a humiliation not attenuated by her otherwise privileged existence: “She found it difficult to reconcile her comfortable life with the nightly imprisonment to which she and her neighbors were subjected.” Her father, Simone, pushes for her to marry Signor Morpurgo, a sensible choice considering the businessman’s wealth. But Mirelle pines for Christophe Lefevre, a French soldier under the command of Napoleon while he marches through Italy. Christophe is not only part of an invading military force, but also a Roman Catholic. Meanwhile, a Catholic named Francesca Marotti causes a stir when she claims to see a painted Madonna look down on her and shed a tear, a miraculous moment some interpret as a sign to take up arms against both the French and the Jews. Francesca is no friend of the Jews, but she doesn’t share her husband Emilio’s murderous contempt for them either. He’s pulled into a conspiracy to pulverize the Jewish community organized by Cardinal Ranuzzi. Cameron delicately details Francesca’s crisis of conscience, torn between the anti-Semitic venom of her husband and the church to which she’s devoted and the example of Jewish decency a young French soldier, Daniel Isidore, provides. The author paints a vivid tableau of the historical period with impressive rigor and authenticity. In addition, Cameron provocatively wonders if, while prejudice is eternal, past ages were better equipped to manage it. Nevertheless, the story is a stirring one that never didactically lectures readers.
A gripping peek into a bygone Italy and an astute look at the era’s prejudice.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-850-7
Page Count: 456
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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