A bewitching, often spine-tingling historical novel, clever in its conception and execution alike.
In late 1944, an SS soldier working at a concentration camp faces the chaos of World War II’s final months in Fenstermacher’s historical thriller.
Gottschalk began his military career in the SS with some enthusiasm, eager to please and climb the hierarchical ladder. However, after seven months serving as a blockführer—he’s in charge of a group of concentration camp inmates—he’s becoming dispirited by his work, so much so that he earns the nickname Gloomy Gottschalk. (“Looking in the mirror I had never really noticed any inherent sombreness, but to call my visage radiant or buoyant would be equally inaccurate.”) He’s stunned when he's summoned to the “mansion,” the residence of the camp’s highest ranking officer, Liebehenschell, for reasons that are left ambiguous. When Gottschalk arrives, he is flummoxed by what he finds: Liebehenschell is mysteriously absent, apparently replaced by Katznelson, a man he has never heard of and who seems to lack any semblance of military bearing. The widely feared Robert Mulka, another officer in attendance, shows unabashed contempt for Katznelson, a disgust only further accentuated by Mulka’s drunkenness. Viktor Copesius, the camp physician, presides over this inexplicable meeting, depicted with terrifying clarity by the author. The meeting culminates in a card game designed to determine who will play what role in a game of Wilhelm Tell: In short, someone will be shooting something off someone else’s head. This surreal gathering takes place on the last day of 1944: By this point, it’s clear that the war is all but over and Germany’s cause is lost. The madness that eventually takes hold in the narrative is the product of both the Nazis’ failure and the ensuing chaos—all taking place in a grimly discomfiting concentration camp setting portrayed with unflinching attention to detail by the author. The figure of Gottschalk is the weakest part of this otherwise penetrating novel—blockführers were notorious for both their barbarism and their stupidity, and he defies both these characterizations. Nonetheless, this is an artfully chilling novel, as suspenseful as it is intelligently grotesque.
A bewitching, often spine-tingling historical novel, clever in its conception and execution alike.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Origami Press
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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