An evocative but excessively adulatory fictionalized biography.
Screenwriter Myers’ debut novel illuminates the life of Leonardo da Vinci, depicting him as a painter and inventor driven by curiosity about the world around him.
The Barbera Foundation’s Mentoris Project publishes novels and nonfiction celebrating great Italians and Italian-Americans. This volume begins in Tuscany in 1459: As an illegitimate child, 7-year-old Leonardo isn’t allowed to attend school, but he educates himself by paying attention to the natural wonders around him—and he’s interested in everything he sees. This becomes his motto: “To be a painter, one must be a great observer not only of people, but all of nature.” At age 15, he moves to Florence to be an artist’s apprentice, and soon, church panels and nobles’ portraits are his bread and butter. But his interests also extend into science and philosophy: He’s fascinated by a solar eclipse, investigates anatomy and the mechanics of flight, and even questions the nature of the soul. He moves among Milan, Florence, and Rome, serving as a court painter for King Louis XII and as an architect for King Francis I, both of France, during the Italian Wars. Truly, this was the epitome of a Renaissance man. His idealism and curiosity get him into trouble, however; he’s briefly a military engineer but is so appalled by battles that he deserts from Cesare Borgia’s army. When Pope Leo X threatens him with excommunication for dissecting corpses, he replies, “I think it is right to study the works of God.” In this novel’s most rewarding scenes, readers see Leonardo’s famous works in progress: The Last Supper mural for a convent (which starts peeling months later, due to his experimental paint) and the portrait of silk merchant’s wife Lisa Gherardini with her “mysterious smile”; the Mona Lisa remains unfinished for years because of his struggle to convey her “wordless wisdom.” Myers also manages the sweep of time well, particularly via the use of characters’ letters. Occasionally, though, he resorts to lines such as “More years passed.” Oddly, this book most resembles a biography of a saint: Leonardo speaks in profound sound bites and hardly seems to have any flaws, except perhaps a reluctance to finish projects. A bit more earthiness might have been truer to his character and the time period.
An evocative but excessively adulatory fictionalized biography.Pub Date: April 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947431-09-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Barbera Foundation
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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