Ambitious and surprising.
In a mix of historical fiction and fantasy, Rossner's debut weaves a richly detailed story of Jewish identity and sisterhood.
Sisters Laya and Liba are different as night and day. In their family’s cottage, nestled in the Kodari forest surrounding the town of Dubossary, they adhere in different degrees to their family’s Orthodox Judaism. Dark-haired Liba—ungainly and dogged by a persistent hunger for meat—revels in Jewish study with her father, while Laya, who possesses the preternatural ability to communicate with the Kodari forest itself, is a free spirit animated by wanderlust, eager to break with the strictures of their insular community. Though held at arm’s length by the local Jews because their mother is a convert, the sisters live a relatively peaceful life till an unexpected visit from their father’s brother Yankl brings news of their grandfather’s illness in a nearby town. Yankl implores their father to return, and before their parents embark on the journey, Liba witnesses them transform into animals—her father into a bear, her mother into a swan—forcing them to expose a long-hidden truth. Each girl is descended from a lineage able to morph, at will, into an animal counterpart: Liba into a bear like her father, Laya into a swan like her mother. Just as the girls begin to come to grips with this new reality, their parents leave and a sense of foreboding infects Dubossary. Jews are blamed for the deaths of two gentiles whose bodies were found at the edge of an orchard; a mysterious band of brothers peddling fruit occupies the town market; and families disappear. As the sisters grapple with the frightening implications of their identities, they must harness them to shield the town from forces that threaten to tear it apart. Told in alternating sections from the two sisters' perspectives that switch between prose (for Liba) and occasionally melodramatic poetry (for Laya), this is an atmospheric yarn that sets elements of Jewish, Greek, and European folklore against a pogrom-era Eastern European backdrop. Rossner’s story is inspired by her own family's history; each of her great-grandparents fled anti-Semitic violence in Europe, and her story is emotionally charged, full of sharp historical detail and well-deployed Yiddish phrases. Though the narrative is dragged down by stilted dialogue and a clichéd romance for Liba, the sensitive depiction of the sisters' bond and surprising mythological elements will keep readers’ interest piqued.
Ambitious and surprising.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-48325-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
PROFILES
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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