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
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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