A thorough but slow and entangled historical novel.
A historical novel set in the late-18th century dramatizes the plight of the Vlachs, an ancient but beleaguered people in the Balkan Mountains.
In 1770, Ali is a young, politically naïve man, bewildered by the labyrinthine political tumults of the day, “that stormy sea of clashing Empires.” He has only one aspiration: In the wake of his father’s death, he wants to restore his Tzepeleni clan to its former glory in Epirus, which would also rebuild his family’s wealth. His cunning mother, Khamko, not only ensures that he becomes the clan’s next commander, but that he becomes accustomed to the corridors of power. He learns Turkish and Greek, and he joins the sultan’s army, hoping to take advantage of the Ottoman Empire’s emphasis on merit rather than class. He rises to positions of considerable influence but falls in love with Shana, a member of the Gramostea clan, promised already in marriage to two others for political reasons. Also, the sultan orders Ali to make war against the Vlachs, including Shana’s clan, an order supported by the Christian Orthodox Church in Constantinople.
Roznoveanu hails from a long line of Vlachs, a forgotten people she vividly portrays. Consider this synoptic reference given to Omar, the Grand Vizier of the sultan: “He explained that the Vlachs’ secret realm south of the Danube had been a totally different reality built by completely unlike people, a sort of Empire on the mountaintops, having no ruler but bold, rich, and independent citizens. Their cities—linked together by almost the same language, geography, and ancestral customs—were built higher and higher all over Rumelia by those who took refuge from the third century on, when invaders started to come.” Ali, who is quietly half Vlach, is a fascinating figure—handsome and brimming with charm; he’s also capable of extraordinary brutality. Furthermore, he’s inclined to a philosophical worldview and wonders deeply about his lot in life. “Could love travel through time in families? Are we the same or different from those before us? Is our fate decided by their choices? Do we have to fulfill their unfinished tasks?” Roznoveanu’s knowledge of the Vlachs—including the culture and geography of the region and its complex political and theological divisions—is impressive. The plot is punishingly convoluted, however. A legion of characters peopling just as many subplots proves bewildering. The author seems eager to ensure not a single detail, no matter how granular or germane, is excised, leaving the reader buried under minutiae. The book concludes with a series of genealogical tables and maps, reference tools that are essential to understanding the story. The result of this narrative approach, which seems better suited to a historical rather than a novelistic account, is that the storyline dawdles. Roznoveanu’s writing style doesn’t help—long sentences densely packed with information, some of it essential and some entirely peripheral, often clumsily conveyed, are typical. At one juncture, pages and pages of debate regarding the differences and similarities of Islam and Christianity appear, a digression the reader could do without.
A thorough but slow and entangled historical novel.Pub Date: June 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66416-806-0
Page Count: 442
Publisher: Xlibris US
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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