Kanner’s second novel is animated but ultimately fails to leave a deep impression.
The book of Esther comes to life in this vivid novel based on the Old Testament tale.
Esther became queen of Persia against all odds. She was born into peasantry, orphaned in childhood, kidnapped at 14 by soldiers of King Xerxes, and brought forcefully to serve in the king’s harem. She catches the king’s eye during their first night together, and by the following day, she is queen—despite being secretly Jewish. Kanner, whose first novel, Sinners and the Sea (2013), illustrated the life of Noah's wife, another Old Testament heroine, does a fine job describing her heroine's various struggles. We hear Esther's voice clearly, and, despite a few anachronisms, that voice is moving. Kanner embraces the erotic underpinnings of the Biblical story and includes rich descriptions of the palace harem, the other concubines, and Esther’s sexual encounters with the king. Supporting characters are equally vivid: Kanner’s descriptions are convincing and rich, though they don't reach very deep. Her handling of dialogue can sometimes sound too contemporary for the time period and at other times, archaic, even starchy. Esther has to hurry: the king’s favored adviser, Haman, has begun urging him to decimate his land’s Jewish population in order to acquire untold riches. Esther is the only one who can convince her husband to spare the Jews. Bracing as all of this is, though, it’s overshadowed by an entirely fictional subplot in which Esther falls helplessly in love with the soldier Erez. Many breathless pages are devoted to their yearnings. Kanner does offer an appealing heroine: a woman who rose to the highest position her world offered and sought to leave behind an enduring, and noble, legacy.
Kanner’s second novel is animated but ultimately fails to leave a deep impression.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-0866-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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