The battlefield and hospital scenes convey Lemaitre’s mastery of imagery, but his characters—Edouard in particular—fail to...
The battlefields of World War I give birth to two different, but related, schemes to swindle grieving French families out of their money.
It’s November 1918, and word is that an armistice is nigh: French soldiers on the battlefield are keenly aware that they may be going home. Thus it's with great dismay that Albert Maillard finds himself back in the fight following the shooting of two soldiers, "an old man and a kid," who were sent on a reconnaissance mission by Lt. Henri d'Aulney-Pradelle. When Albert comes across their bodies in the ensuing battle, he realizes the officer shot his own men in the back to restart the fighting, but before he can tell anyone, he finds himself buried alive after d'Aulney-Pradelle pushes him into a shell crater that then collapses on him. That's when he meets fellow soldier Edouard Pericourt, who digs him out and resuscitates him and who is then wounded himself when he catches a piece of shrapnel in the face. The shrapnel wound is terrible—it "ripped away his lower jaw; below his nose is a gaping void"—but Edouard, the artistic son of a rich man, refuses to allow any type of reconstructive surgery. He lets his family think he's dead so they won't have to see him with his terrible injury. Albert keeps him alive and, when he's released from the hospital, stays with him out of a sense of duty. Together, the two men concoct a scam to support themselves by selling war memorials they don't intend to build, while d'Aulney-Pradelle, who has married Edouard’s sister, Madeleine, becomes involved in another scam to rebury French soldiers in undersized coffins. Lemaitre’s tale is carefully researched, and most of the story’s value lies in its historical authenticity. The book is much too long and often repetitive, and the character of Edouard is both bizarre and unsympathetic: Lemaitre never establishes a reason why he would refuse further medical intervention.
The battlefield and hospital scenes convey Lemaitre’s mastery of imagery, but his characters—Edouard in particular—fail to arouse much empathy in readers.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62365-903-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
In her depictions of her characters and their worlds—both internal and external—Tokarczuk has created something entirely new.
A series of deaths mystifies a small Polish village.
When her neighbor Big Foot turns up dead one night, Janina Duszejko and another neighbor, Oddball, rush to his house to lay out the body and properly dress him. They’re having trouble getting hold of the police, and, as Oddball points out, “He’ll be stiff as a board before they get here.” Janina and Oddball—and Big Foot, up till now—live in an out-of-the-way Polish village on the Czech border. It’s rural, and remote, and most of the other inhabitants are part-time city-dwellers who only show up in the summer, when the weather is more temperate. Janina narrates Tokarczuk’s (Flights, 2018) latest creation to appear in English. But she wouldn’t like to hear herself referred to by that name, which she thinks is “scandalously wrong and unfair.” In fact, she explains, “I try my best never to use first names and surnames, but prefer epithets that come to mind of their own accord the first time I see a Person”—hence “Oddball” and “Big Foot.” Janina spends much of her time studying astrology and, on Fridays, translating passages of Blake with former pupil Dizzy, who comes to visit. But after Big Foot dies, other bodies start turning up, and Janina and her neighbors are drawn further and further into the mystery of their deaths. Some of the newly dead were involved in illegal activities, but Janina is convinced that “Animals” (she favors a Blakean style of capitalization) are responsible. Tokarczuk’s novel is a riot of quirkiness and eccentricity, and the mood of the book, which shifts from droll humor to melancholy to gentle vulnerability, is unclassifiable—and just right. Tokarczuk’s mercurial prose seems capable of just about anything. Like the prizewinning Flights, this novel resists the easy conventions of the contemporary work of fiction.
In her depictions of her characters and their worlds—both internal and external—Tokarczuk has created something entirely new.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-54133-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Novels such as this extensively researched and passionate polemic are not necessarily art, but, like Sinclair Lewis’ The...
A day at a Mississippi abortion clinic unfurls backward as a self-appointed avenging angel wreaks havoc.
Picoult’s latest takes the unusual tack of proceeding in reverse. At 5 p.m., the Center, Mississippi’s last remaining abortion clinic, is awash in blood as Hugh McElroy, a Jackson police negotiator, is still bargaining with George Goddard, the deranged gunman who has occupied the Center for hours. Five hostages have been released, two gravely wounded: Hugh’s sister, Bex, and Dr. Louie Ward, the Center’s surgeon (whom, according to her author’s note, Picoult based on the outspoken abortion provider Dr. Willie Parker). One person inside is dead, and Hugh is still waiting for word of his teenage daughter, Wren, who had gone to the Center for a prescription for birth control pills, accompanied by her aunt Bex. As the day moves backward, several voices represent a socio-economic cross-section of the South; a few are on the front lines of the anti-abortion vs. abortion-rights war—but most are merely seeking basic women’s health care. Olive, 68, is at the Center for a second opinion; Janine, an anti-abortion activist, is there to spy; Joy is seeking an abortion; and Izzy is pregnant and conflicted. George wants revenge—his daughter recently had an abortion. A third father-daughter story runs parallel to the hostage crisis: A teenager named Beth, hospitalized for severe bleeding, is being prosecuted for murder after having taken abortifacient drugs she'd ordered online at 16 weeks pregnant. At times, Picoult defaults to her habitual sentimentality, particularly in describing the ties that bind Hugh, Wren, and Bex. This novel is unflinching, however, in forcing readers to witness the gory consequences of a mass shooting, not to mention the graphic details of abortions at various stages of gestation and the draconian burdens states like Mississippi have placed on a supposed constitutional right. For Dr. Ward, an African-American, “the politics of abortion” have “so much in common with the politics of racism.” The Times Arrow– or Benjamin Button–like backward structure adds little except for those ironic tinges hindsight always provides.
Novels such as this extensively researched and passionate polemic are not necessarily art, but, like Sinclair Lewis’ The Jungle, they are necessary.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-345-54498-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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