A captivating depiction of a 15th-century conflict and a dramatically thrilling interpretation of Joan of Arc’s life.
This final installment of a trilogy reimagines the story of Joan of Arc.
In 1428, the situation for France is dire. The war against the English is “going from bad to worse,” and the possibility that Orléans will be conquered poses a grave threat: “Everyone knew that if Orléans fell, the heartland of France would be open to the invaders.” Then a sliver of hope is delivered by a young girl, Jeanne Darc, the daughter of landowning peasants in remote Domremy. She’s only 16 years old but claims to have received divine communications from St. Michael, the archangel, who assures her that her mission in life is to ensure the revival of France’s sovereignty: “I must go to the dauphin and lead his army to victory against the English. My banner will show Jesus Christ Our Saviour blessing an image of the fleur-de-lis held by a warrior angel.” Astonishingly, Jeanne is able to convince a series of important men she is neither delusional nor a malevolent agent of Satan, impressing each with “an aura, a kind of light about her which forces you to listen.” In this volume of Tallon’s (The Templar Legacy, 2019, etc.) Richard Calveley Trilogy, an earnestly credulous account of Jeanne’s contribution to the war effort is chronicled alongside a portrayal of Richard, an English captain forced in his dotage to consider his future beyond military life. The author vividly re-creates the historical period in all its riveting drama. In addition to a rigorously realistic account of the war, he skillfully articulates the views of the competing sides. Jeanne’s part of that history has been told many times, and Tallon’s version doesn’t add anything that is particularly fresh. The novel also assumes the least plausible rendering of a tale that reads like mythology—Jeanne is presented as genuinely inspired by divine epiphany. Of course, this is a matter of great debate, and she could perhaps more plausibly be portrayed as a mentally ill teenager cynically exploited by statesmen. Whatever position readers take on Jeanne, the author grippingly brings to life her extraordinary existence and grim end. Richard’s story is less enthralling and so quotidian by comparison that it seems tepid. As a result, the book drags a bit—a shorter version may have more effectively sustained the tale’s electricity.
A captivating depiction of a 15th-century conflict and a dramatically thrilling interpretation of Joan of Arc’s life.Pub Date: March 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64348-994-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: BookVenture Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
APPRECIATIONS
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