An absorbing tale set in Louis XIV’s France.
A beautiful young country girl navigates the perilous corridors of the court of the Sun King in Williams’ historical novel.
In late-17th-century France, when the reign of Louis XIV is at the pinnacle of its splendor, beautiful 16-year-old country girl Sylvienne d’Aubert’s life is transformed by a totally unexpected summons to join the glittering court of the Sun King as a lady-in-waiting. Raised by a single mother and educated by nuns, Sylvienne has grown up in modest comfort, almost entirely ignorant of her own origins. Not long before the king’s invitation arrives, she’s shocked to learn that her mother was the illegitimate daughter of the king’s uncle, and that her own father had been a local lord whose estate, upon his accidental death, was seized by a scheming brother. Now living in a servant’s cottage on a modest pension and considering marriage to a kind young shoemaker, Sylvienne is suddenly uprooted and finds herself alone at the very epicenter of French politics and society. Arriving at the Palais de Tuileries, the king’s residence in Paris, Sylvienne is overwhelmed by the magnificence of her new surroundings: “My eyes were drawn to the gilded ceiling embedded with opulent paintings. Now I was gawking. Chandeliers and wall sconces illuminated portraits of royal ancestors.” But as Sylvienne serves the king’s favorite mistress, the beautiful Madame de Montespan, she must fend off a lascivious nobleman, brave the sometimes-vicious intrigues of the court, and steel herself against the glare of the popular press. Williams’ knowledge of the period is thorough, and the novel’s setting in the royal court is clearly drawn and always compelling. The author provides readers with a strong and intriguing central character whose growth toward self-realization is one of the novel’s principal strengths. While the narrative sometimes dwells too much on ambience at the expense of a fast-moving plot, readers of historical fiction will no doubt enjoy the novel’s authentic and seductive atmosphere.
An absorbing tale set in Louis XIV’s France.Pub Date: May 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781685134129
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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