by Paul T. Scheuring ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2022
A thrilling historical drama, thoughtful and emotionally poignant.
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A man is offered a fortune to illegally excavate a body for scientific research in the second novel by screenwriter Scheuring (The Far Shore, 2017), who co-wrote the 2003 film A Man Apart.
In 1820, professional anatomists in England had a vexing problem: They had an intense desire to understand the human body but a chronic undersupply of cadavers to autopsy. This created an unusual partnership between respectable physicians and unseemly grave robbers, euphemistically referred to as resurrectionists. Scheuring deftly captures its peculiar nature in an author’s note: “A more antithetical set of bedfellows I cannot imagine, especially in England, with its rigid class structures: the university-educated doctor of high station conspiring with the brutish, illiterate criminal of such compromised moral standing that he would breach hallowed convention, steal from the Lord’s own soil, and traffic in the sludge and decay of rotting corpses.” Job Mowatt is one such resurrectionist, desperately trying to build a better life for his daughter, Ivy, both beautiful and brilliant, her future sure to be stymied by the “trappings of station” if he can’t raise enough money for her education. Then, an opportunity arises: Job is offered an “astronomical” sum of money to unearth the body of Ella Beddoe, the wife of Marcus Beddoe, a powerful and dangerous man. The offer is made by Dr. Percival Quinn, “one of the most learned anatomists in all of London,” and not just out of thirst for scientific knowledge. His wife, Neva, is pregnant but, due to prior illness, is unlikely to survive the delivery, and he hopes studying Ella’s body—she was pregnant at the time of her death—will provide the clues that saves his wife.
Scheuring does a masterful job of juxtaposing two typically incongruent worlds, glittering high society and the soiled underbelly of the poor. Ivy exists on the border of those worlds—destitute by a socio-economic accident of birth but also blessed with the looks and brains to rise above her lot. And despite the great social distance between Job and Percival, both men exist primarily to protect the loved ones who face grave danger, a comparison drawn by the author with impressive subtlety and power. Moreover, Scheuring provocatively raises questions not only about the gruesome work of resurrectionism, but of the lust for science that demands it and how scientific procedures are themselves implicated in a dark dehumanization. Consider this chilling depiction of the anatomy of a human body: “Another hallmark moment: the first violation. When a student must take blade to a body and cut away what heretofore had been critical to life and dispose of it as if it were nothing more than table scraps. When the body goes from the virgin, inviolable province of the human soul to a work-thing of science, an assembly of disparate, inanimate, investigative possibilities.” This is a bracing, remarkable work. Both historically astute and grippingly dramatic, it implicitly raises questions about the human cost of saving human lives and of the potential degradation wrought by a science meant to elevate humanity to a higher plane of civilization.
A thrilling historical drama, thoughtful and emotionally poignant.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9984502-2-3
Page Count: 328
Publisher: One Light Road
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 9, 2024
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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by Leigh Bardugo ; illustrated by Dani Pendergast
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