A nest-of-vipers melodrama set in German-occupied France near the end of WWII, from the young author of last year’s debut novel A Parisian from Kansas. The story begins in 1944 in Paris, where “stomach doctor” Emile Bastien, assisted by his beautiful secretary-nurse (and mistress) Simone Givry, maintains a thriving practice during the lean Occupation years by numbering Nazi officers among his patients. Emile is separated from his wife Marie, from whom he has hidden a fortune in gold ingots—presumably somewhere on the family’s country vineyard currently occupied by the embittered Marie. An extended flashback to 1942 explicitly links the Bastiens’ willful daughter Paulette and resentful son Rene to their parents’ past and present machinations—though it interrupts, and somewhat diffuses the main plot, which develops from Emile’s vengeful surgical mistreatment of ulcer patient Heinrich Schrodinger, an SS major who has smilingly threatened, while describing his symptoms, to appropriate the stoical Simone. As Paris is liberated, Tapon pours it on: the melodrama rises to—well, risible levels. Emile is arrested by French authorities for having “aided Nazis.” Simone, desperate to retrieve the “dowry” she knows he’s hidden, contrives to visit Emile in prison by seducing a brainless guard (“She had never felt stronger, had never so dominated a man”). A confrontation during the reading of Emile’s will puts Simone and Marie into collusion against the defiant Paulette; a discovery is made in the Bastien country house’s cellar; and there’s a savage sudden twist at the end. If all this sounds a bit overloaded, be assured that it is: Tapon seems to have intended to marry an ironic study of wartime mentality and morality to a sleek, sexy “Diabolique”-like suspense tale. Tapon can do better but very possibly didn’t want to this time around. The Mistress reads like a screenplay, and the movie version can’t be far behind.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-94461-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
