An ambitious but somewhat confusing graphic novel that seeks to vindicate Teilhard’s works.
De Terra explores the work and reputation of controversial French Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) in this debut graphic novel.
Teilhard was a divisive figure even in his own lifetime. His radical concepts of “hominization” (“the process leading to reflective life in mankind”), “noogenesis” (“the evolution of consciousness”), and “Omega” (“the point at which the universe will ultimately center upon itself and the climax of evolution”) were influential in the New Age movement, but his views on original sin led to his censure by the Vatican. With this graphic novel, de Terra presents the life of Teilhard, who died in 1955 during his de facto exile in the United States, as well as a fictional, posthumous trial at the Vatican in 2009. In the latter, the deceased Teilhard is charged with heresy and violations of canon law by conservatives who feel that his teachings may cause a schism in the church the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Reformation. Teilhard’s defenders are a pair of Jesuit priests named O’Malley and Azcona who are tasked with reconciling his teachings with Catholic orthodoxy. The story uses flashbacks of various moments in Teilhard’s life—including his experiences in World War I and his work studying Peking Man—and of other revolutionary figures in the history of the church to supplement a theological argument of great consequence, not only for the reputation of Teilhard, but also for the direction of the Catholic Church in its third millennium. The author’s father, Helmut de Terra, was a friend of Teilhard’s, and Helmut’s first wife, Rhoda, served as Teilhard’s assistant for the last years of his life. De Terra bases this graphic novel on their accounts as well as on Teilhard’s prolific letters and publications, and he pieces together scenes using direct quotes and invented dialogue. He keeps the biographical sections intriguing, although readers may wish that he had taken more time in the early pages to explain Teilhard’s concepts and what made them controversial. Instead, he merely presents scene after scene of Vatican rebuffs. The trial itself often lags as various ill-defined priests debate points of theology, and readers may never be quite sure about the stakes of the argument at hand. Additionally, the book’s blending of fact and fiction will do a disservice to many readers, as it often will be quite difficult for them to know which events actually happened and which have been invented by the author. De Terra also exaggerates the cultural influence of Teilhard, comparing him to Martin Luther and placing him on the cover of Time magazine and on T-shirts. The book’s art by Villafuerte is perhaps its greatest selling point, as the page layouts and visual pacing do much to make each spread compelling and digestible. The glossy, full-color pages make this a handsome volume even if the content isn’t quite as thrilling as it might appear on first glance.
An ambitious but somewhat confusing graphic novel that seeks to vindicate Teilhard’s works.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-63885-9
Page Count: 260
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2017
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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