Reed’s confident debut amiably reimagines Hawthorne’s tragic heroine as a brave lady in tumultuous times, making this sequel...
Continuation of The Scarlet Letter follows Hester Prynne and her wild daughter to Oliver Cromwell’s England.
A year after Arthur Dimmesdale confessed that Pearl was his illegitimate child comes the death of Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s vindictive estranged husband. Surprisingly, Roger’s will leaves all his substantial wealth to the girl who is not his daughter. Fearing that Pearl will never make a marriage in Puritan Boston, where she is called a witch-baby, Hester takes the eight-year-old to England. But the merry old land of her youth is gone, replaced by a dour nation under the rule of Cromwell. Dancing, theater and Christmas have been banished, and everyone wears somber gray clothes. Hester reunites with her childhood friend Mary Wright, moving with Pearl into the Wrights’ grand London house. After years of loneliness and shame, Hester and Pearl enjoy a cozy intimacy with Mary and her children. It’s when Robert Wright returns from battle in Ireland that Hester’s troubles begin. Mary’s husband is a member of Cromwell’s inner circle, and he has told the Protector of Hester’s rare gift. Since leaving Boston, she has been able to read the sin of anyone she looks at. Adulterers and hypocrites squirm in her presence, and she’s avoided at parties, but pious Cromwell uses her to root out traitors; Hester’s second sight sends many men to the Tower, to her dismay. As Cromwell becomes more paranoid and dangerous, Hester falls in with a band of Royalists (including a dashing libertine lord with whom she enjoys a casual affair) attempting to restore the monarchy. Her confidant, the newly enthroned King Charles II, helps Hester achieve her greatest wish, a good match for Pearl.
Reed’s confident debut amiably reimagines Hawthorne’s tragic heroine as a brave lady in tumultuous times, making this sequel to his literary classic a standard-issue historical novel.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-58392-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
