A dramatic family saga that captures the widespread fallout of war.
The fates of two extended families are intertwined during World War II in Norsworthy’s stirring historical novel.
When the story opens in 1939, 10-year-old Londoner Colin Clarke is still adjusting to his new home in the country in Elsworth, where he’s been sent by his mother, Beryl, as war looms. Beryl, a nurse, has remained in London to treat the anticipated wounded. Colin’s new “family” for the duration includes Ivy Hughes, her son, Hugo, and twins Patsy and Margaret, whom Ivy took in so they wouldn’t be separated. But the war soon intrudes even on this bucolic scene. First, Colin’s father, Gordon, becomes a German prisoner of war in France. Next, Hugo’s dad, Wills, is listed as missing in action. Colin and Hugo meet American flier Jack Philip, who eventually develops into a surrogate father for them. Annalise, the German POW camp commandant’s younger wife, takes an interest in Gordon, both for his construction skills and his physical attributes, and eventually makes him a tempting offer (“If she wished him to notice her, he would. If she was laying a trap, he preferred to find out sooner instead of later”). Gordon exploits this opportunity to aid his fellow prisoners and the local Resistance cell. After Beryl receives notice that Gordon has died from typhus, she and Jack grow much closer, with Colin’s reluctant approval. But those involved will learn that not all is as it seems during this confusing, chaotic period of war and upheaval. In this debut work, based partly on her father’s experiences as a POW, Norsworthy masterfully captures the action on two fronts: home and battlefield. Her thorough research lends an immediacy to the narrative that makes the reader feel present for each scene. Her story smoothly navigates among the various characters and the war’s varying effects upon them. Initially, the novel appears to be about two boys’ introduction to war, but it’s really the story of one couple, Gordon and Beryl, and the difficult choices they face because of misinformation and doubt. Most of the characters get their happy endings, though not always the ones they—or the reader—expected.
A dramatic family saga that captures the widespread fallout of war.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781685133719
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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