An intriguing but uneven war tale.
In this debut novel set in World War II Europe, readers see courageous people struggling mightily with Nazism and enduring hair-raising experiences.
Brandon delivers two young protagonists—and their tumultuous vectors—Sonne Becker and Rainer von Bauchelle. The Beckers live in Berlin and hate the Nazi movement. The von Bauchelles live in Colmar, Alsace. They, too, are good people, and the teenage Rainer’s best friend is a Jew, Josef Taffel. Then Germany goes to war; Sonne’s father is conscripted; and the Nazis move into Colmar. After Rainer graduates from the University of Strasbourg with a degree in art history and restoration, he is a rising academic star who gets conscripted by the Nazis for his expertise. Meanwhile, Sonne is sent to the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s fortress, first as a food taster (Der Führer fears being poisoned). Later, because she is a beautiful specimen of Aryan womanhood, she is subjected to a forced artificial insemination. With the help of a sympathetic guard, she escapes, winding up at a museum in Konigsberg, where she and Rainer meet and soon plan to flee to America. Brandon’s tale is very bumpy. The prose can be overdone and too writerly, with a surplus of adjectives (“The man, a few inches taller than the others, was handsome in a classic rebellious kind of way, with thick brown hair tousled in rugged abandon about an intense face and the deepest of green eyes. He…saved his slow, lazy smile for Rennie”). But there are some effective scenes. An evening in 1938 with the Beckers and the fatuous, Nazi-loving Hirsch family, for example, is especially well handled. The Hirsches are appropriately arrogant and odious. Readers will also be cheered by the benevolent and heroic people that the protagonists meet along the way. One real historical nugget is the presence of Albert Göring—yes, Hermann’s brother—who in real life rescued as many people as he could and in these pages crosses paths with Sonne and Rainer. But Brandon should have stopped when she was ahead and ended the tale early, with a short and graceful denouement. Instead, the author offers a final reveal that will leave readers rolling their eyes. Even fiction has its limits—or should.
An intriguing but uneven war tale.Pub Date: May 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5136-4909-2
Page Count: 317
Publisher: Out Reach Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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