British playwright and novelist Prince, in his first fiction to appear here, uses the constricted quarters of a steamship to explore human foibles and fancies, to mixed results. The Laurentia leaves New York in 1865, bound for England, carrying most prominently Olivia and Arthur Crichton—a middle-aged British businessman, married to a much younger woman, who's struggling (without much success) to believe both that his wife truly loves him and that she means to be faithful. Much of the action revolves around the troubled but decent Arthur, who, by virtue of his success and bearing, is deferred to by most of the other passengers. Among the subplots is the effort of a threadbare, would-be industrialist to convince Arthur to invest in factories that he'd like to build in the devastated South. Meanwhile, a variety of voyagers, including the oily Reverend Stibbard, are very likely not what they seem. A cardsharp is cunningly at work. A young, handsome, rather disturbing young American, John Bonney, seems to have some substantial secret to hide, and is increasingly drawn to the lovely, conflicted Olivia. And Charles Stuart, a profoundly gifted black singer, who has recently sung for Abraham Lincoln at the White House, stays mostly in his cabin. He is leaving America to pursue a career in Europe, in hopes that prejudice there will be less oppressive and violent. During the voyage, Arthur is called upon to defend Stuart from the harassments of a boorish southerner. Many matters come to a head when Olivia falls ill with pneumonia, with the ship still many days from port. Prince keeps his many subplots deftly in the air, and doesn't overplay the period background. There's also a nice settling of accounts as the Laurentia draws close to England, and Arthur is a modest, believable hero. Still, there are few revelations here, and the exploration of human behavior is neither particularly ambitious nor startling. A modest work, then, precise, entertaining, but unsurprising.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45308-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
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