A capable enough imagining of real events, though weighted down by genre formulas.
Routine recounting of a crucial episode in Civil War history.
Fought in the cold December of 1862, the Fredericksburg campaign combined classical set pieces with novel ways of slaughter; of the 12,000-plus Union soldiers killed or wounded there, more than half were cut down in front of a stone wall by raking fire then unfamiliar to the fife-and-drum battlefield tactics of the day. Former TV executive and documentary filmmaker Croker does a solid job of capturing the grimn horror of the day, although this tale seems more labored and clichéd than his To Make Men Free (2004), about the equally sanguinary Battle of Antietam. As befits the genre, there are stoic, portentous moments highlighting the lonely leaders of the struggle—Lincoln, Lee and that old skinflint Salmon Chase, who takes time from brooding to enjoy the sight of a beautiful daughter (“Of all the things Chase hated, paying for Kate’s dresses ranked high on the list—until he saw her in one”). There are patches of colorful language by hard-bitten veterans (“God damn those fat-ass quartermaster sons of bitches!”). There’s nail-biting aplenty by worried strategists on both sides, busily moving masses of men across the wintry Virginia landscape. And then there are splendid moments by honest-to-goodness heroes such as Joshua Chamberlain and the pious Stonewall Jackson, more disturbed by the loss of churches than of the loss of men, and of course lots of bloodshed, for this was the battle where Lee famously remarked, “It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.” Yet in all this there is little of the storytelling flair or sense of drama of Michael Shaara’s Killer Angels and all of the gravitas and slowness of Ronald Maxwell’s 2003 film Gods and Generals, which seemingly tried to depict Fredericksburg in real time.
A capable enough imagining of real events, though weighted down by genre formulas.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-055910-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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