A spirited novel of obligation and ethics in a time of brutality.
In Horvitz’s historical novel, a would-be rabbi finds himself on the front lines of the Russo–Turkish War.
All the Jews of Navahrudak know and fear the conscription officer, who delivers the news whenever some young man has been drafted into the Russian Imperial Army. (He’s so unpopular that he works at night, affixing his notices to people’s doors.) When a letter arrives instructing Yakov Leibovich to report for a barracks assignment, his tinker father—a conscripted veteran of the Crimean War—flies into a rage. “You will be cannon fodder, Yakov!” he cries. “Is that what you want to be? Do you want to die in a frozen trench so the Tsar can beat his chest and draw bigger maps of the Russian Empire?” The 20-year-old rabbinical student—whose primary interests are the Torah and fantasizing about the buxom Rivkah Eizenberg, who gathers scraps in the market square—agrees that dying in a frozen trench is not at all what he wants. The intervention of a rabbi secures Yakov a job with a private military supply firm—but only on the condition that Yakov find another Jew to fight in his place. Yakov reluctantly fingers a squatter who lives on the edge of town, a man who seems to have no family. Only after the man is taken away does Yakov learn that he’s a long-lost childhood friend: Avram Eizenberg, brother of Rivkah. Consumed by guilt (“At times, my mind conjures images of a hurt and tearful young woman cursing me, closing her hands into fists, and beating my chest for what I have done to her brother”), Yakov heads to Odessa to begin his work as an army supplier, resolved to find Avram and make sure that he comes to no harm. Yakov succeeds in locating his old friend, but Russia soon declares war on the Ottomans. Will Yakov ever find a way to make amends to Rivkah, or is he destined to follow his friend to a loveless early grave?
Horvitz’s prose, as narrated by Yakov, is spirited and philosophical, as befits a young man who finds himself caught between contemplation of God and a life of action. “At times, I feel the pull of cosmopolitan ideas that I know are inconsistent with the serious spiritual life that my learned rabbi requires,” laments Yakov. “But I cannot help myself. I have an insistent urge to know everything about everything.” The novel’s arc evokes the books of the period in which it is set; the story hinges on a moral failure and its long aftermath. There’s something timeless about Yakov’s journey, one that has the simplicity of a folktale and the weight of a vast Russian saga. Even so, the book takes itself slightly more seriously than readers might wish. A general lack of humor, as well as the rather sentimental treatment of some of the characters, lends the novel a slightly melodramatic quality. That said, readers of historical fiction who have a particular interest in the Pale of Settlement or Imperial Russia will undoubtedly enjoy Horvitz’s rich evocation of the era.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2024
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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