An engaging, swashbuckling tale that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
A debut YA novel imagines the school days of one of literature’s most eloquent swordsmen.
Growing up in 17th-century France, the teenage noble Cyrano de Bergerac prefers to spend his days dreaming up fantastic inventions and wondering what clouds are made of. Even so, he’s still frequently forced to deal with the less enlightened denizens of his age—bullies, street toughs, assorted brigands—not to mention his father, whose boring plans for Cyrano’s future include training him as a lawyer or tax collector. Cyrano dreams of one day becoming a musketeer, though in practice the young man relies less on brute force than on charm and misdirection to stay out of trouble: “He could be witty, comical, charming, and incredibly disarming. He had the ability to talk his way out of a disagreement as quickly as his arrogance and temper could get him into a fight.” After a summer of reluctant tutoring in art and science by the kindly professor Pierre Gassendi as well as adventures with his favorite cousin (and secret crush) Roxanne, Cyrano and his best friend, Henri Le Bret, head off for the university in Paris. Cyrano discovers that the place has even more rules to follow than his own home. Despite what he considers his “nasty big nose,” he quickly manages to wow his teachers and fellow students with his intellect and wit, including the beautiful Margaux. But not everyone at the college is quite so amused by the loquacious rogue, and Cyrano soon encounters dangerous situations that even he might not be able to talk himself out of. Cicchini’s prose is buoyant and snappy, capturing the spirit of his articulate, quippy protagonist: “After Rhetoric class, the boys moved on to the auditorium for Drama, which Cyrano took to like the proverbial fish to water. When Professor Picard, a tall, thin man with angular features, asked for volunteers for a dramatic reading of an Alexandre Hardy play, Cyrano shot up like his seat had springs in it.” The book has a slightly antiquated feel due to the material, the flavor of the language, and the general lightness of its tone. Still, even readers with no past experience with Cyrano will enjoy his youthful capers and duels.
An engaging, swashbuckling tale that doesn’t take itself too seriously.Pub Date: March 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63795-354-9
Page Count: 234
Publisher: One Knight Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
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
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.
An earnest grad student and a faculty member with a bit of a jerkish reputation concoct a fake dating scheme in this nerdy, STEM-filled contemporary romance.
Olive Smith and professor Adam Carlsen first met in the bathroom of Adam's lab. Olive wore expired contact lenses, reducing her eyes to temporary tears, while Adam just needed to dispose of a solution. It's a memory that only one of them has held onto. Now, nearly three years later, Olive is fully committed to her research in pancreatic cancer at Stanford University's biology department. As a faculty member, Adam's reputation precedes him, since he's made many students cry or drop their programs entirely with his bluntness. When Olive needs her best friend, Anh, to think she's dating someone so Anh will feel more comfortable getting involved with Olive's barely-an-ex, Jeremy, she impulsively kisses Adam, who happens to be standing there when Anh walks by. But rumors start to spread, and the one-time kiss morphs into a fake relationship, especially as Adam sees there's a benefit for him. The university is withholding funds for Adam's research out of fear that he'll leave for a better position elsewhere. If he puts down more roots by getting involved with someone, his research funds could be released at the next budgeting meeting in about a month's time. After setting a few ground rules, Adam and Olive agree that come the end of September, they'll part ways, having gotten what they need from their arrangement. Hazelwood has a keen understanding of romance tropes and puts them to good use—in addition to fake dating, Olive and Adam are an opposites-attract pairing with their sunny and grumpy personalities—but there are a couple of weaknesses in this debut novel. Hazelwood manages to sidestep a lot of the complicated power dynamics of a student-faculty romance by putting Olive and Adam in different departments, but the impetus for their fake relationship has much higher stakes for Adam. Olive does reap the benefits of dating a faculty member, but in the end, she's still the one seemingly punished or taunted by her colleagues; readers may have been hoping for a more subversive twist. For a first novel, there's plenty of shine here, with clear signs that Hazelwood feels completely comfortable with happily-ever-afters.
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-33682-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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