Overlong and overwrought, though not without a certain veddy British charm.
A first US appearance for British Vincenzi. (Overlook will also be publishing two of her previous novels: Something Dangerous and Into Temptation.)
Celia, headstrong daughter of aristocratic Edwardian parents, makes the breakfast kippers spin in their silver chafing dish when she decides to marry . . . out of her class. The object of her affections is tall, blond, handsome Oliver Lytton, the offspring of a distinguished London publisher and a rather louche actress, long since decamped. Celia’s outraged father points out that the man can’t even ride a horse. Her practical mother adds that marriage is a business (but neglects to mention that she has been carrying on a clandestine affair for years with a friend of the family’s). But Celia must and will have her way, and so she and Oliver marry, with only the family and a few loyal servants in attendance. Not the lavish society wedding Lady Beckenham had hoped for, but there’s no time to waste—and Celia is delivered of Giles, a robust if ugly-looking infant, a mere six months after the ceremony. Yet there is trouble ahead, and ere long, a silver candlestick will be hurled at the nursery door. Celia is profoundly bored by the unchanging routine of motherhood, and she wants to work. Oliver demurs. “I want you to be in our home, taking care of our son, not out in the rough world of publishing.” Then a collection of Queen Victoria’s letters proves a temptation too powerful to resist, and Celia offers an utterly brilliant suggestion: Shall they publish a simultaneous biography? Lo, a dazzling career begins within the hallowed and fusty walls of Lyttons as our Celia swans it through the ensuing years of tremendous social upheaval, WWI, decorous infidelity with a sexy author, and other proliferating subplots too numerous to count. Studiously avoiding latent snobbery, Vincenzi rounds out this baggy saga with a few working-class characters, whose hearts are in the right place even if their aitches are not.
Overlong and overwrought, though not without a certain veddy British charm.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2003
ISBN: 1-58567-481-8
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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