by Michelle Moran ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 15, 2011
Mannered and elegant; reminiscent in many ways of novels of days long past, particularly the Baroness Orczy’s swifter-paced...
Well-plotted if sometimes slow-moving novel of the French Revolution and one now-famous survivor of that heady (or, perhaps, be-heady) time.
In late 2010, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London installed its newest exhibit: a wax effigy of Lady Gaga. All that had to have started somewhere, and that’s where Moran’s (Nefertiti, 2007) tale comes in, adding dimension and emotion to the known historical facts. Here we find Madame Tussaud—then Mademoiselle Grosholtz—at the beginning of an illustrious career as a maker of wax models, all the rage of an aristocracy that, to judge by some of the scenes Moran unfolds, quite deserves to be put up against the wall. This business of being immortalized in wax is "something reserved only for royals and criminals,” young Marie Grosholtz reflects, and it’s a trade that she and her fashionmonger colleague Rose Bertin are all too glad to be involved with. As tutor and model maker to the court of King Louis XVI, Marie soon finds herself with a wide circle of friends royal and otherwise, including Marie Antoinette, who seems a touch more sensible than the standard account might have it. Into the picture come and go a parade’s worth of eminent historical figures, from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson to the Dauphin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and a very bad Robespierre. Marie is better at art than at guessing the future—“Not everyone may love the queen,” she opines, “but they shall always respect her”—and it’s only a matter of time before the Marquis de Sade starts to howl down from the Bastille that it’s time for the sansculottes to run their own show, which leads to—well, let’s just say that it leads to certain difficulties in the pursuit of the celebrity wax trade. Moran’s story unfolds deliberately and sometimes glacially, but it eventually arrives where it began, having enfolded a small world of characters and situations.
Mannered and elegant; reminiscent in many ways of novels of days long past, particularly the Baroness Orczy’s swifter-paced Scarlet Pimpernel.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-58865-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
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by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
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by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
by Amor Towles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2016
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
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Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility (2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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edited by Amor Towles ; series editor: Otto Penzler
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by Amor Towles
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by Amor Towles
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