An engaging historical novel that addresses big questions—but should have been much shorter.
Kluger’s historical novel charts an American boy’s exciting experiences in World War II Denmark.
In June 1939, Terence Sayre lives with his mother, Katerina Mundt, a vivacious Danish-born dancer and entrepreneur, in Asbury Park, New Jersey; he’s looking forward to his upcoming 14th birthday. Their relationship is close—Terry’s alcoholic father dropped out of their lives years before. When Kate is mortally injured in a car crash, Terry must move to the picturesque seaside town of Riishavn, Denmark, to live with relatives he has only visited briefly before. His grandparents, Gideon and Helga Mundt, are popular and respected figures in the community and lead a large, loving, and energetic clan: Terry’s uncles Kurt and Torben, aunts Ingrid and Rikki, and cousins Jared and Louisa, who are about his age. The Mundts welcome Terry wholeheartedly and all pitch in to provide a rapid-fire immersion course in Danish language and culture—each presenting their own challenges for Terry, until now a typical American boy. Then, in September, Hitler invades Poland, setting off WWII. Debate rages among the Danes, who have no military, over whether to conciliate or confront German aggression. Opinions are sharply divided, even within close-knit families like the Mundts. When the Nazis invade and occupy Denmark, setting up a garrison in Riishavn, each family member, from the teens to the grandparents, navigates the tricky path of appearing to comply while secretly resisting in their own way. The author addresses the thorny choices facing Denmark as a nation and each of its citizens thoughtfully, questioning safety versus risk, compromise versus confrontation, and practicality versus principle. The issues emerge through the characters, providing a nuanced view of the motives and potential consequences of their actions as they grapple with the realities of living under an occupying force.
The story is told from the point of view of Terry, looking back on his growth from child to young adult in the midst of world-changing events—the most tumultuous and exciting time of his life—with the adult perspective he lacked while it was unfolding (“I was a stranger in a small kingdom by the sea, where I thought I had found a temporary haven from my brief life’s travails. With the invasion, that dream was over”). Vivid characters, including independent, unapologetic Aunt Rikki; Terry’s intellectual girlfriend, Nora; his wealthy, gentle friend, Bent; the enigmatic German commandant, Major Sigmund Holst; and others capture the reader’s interest with sharp dialogue and brave exploits. Rikki and Holst enter into an intriguing, ambiguous, off-and-on relationship that raises the question of exactly who is using whom. Kruger’s writing is crisp and descriptive—the plot moves quickly from one crisis to the next. For the first three-quarters of the narrative, covering 1939 through 1942, Terry’s story is both engaging and enlightening. Unfortunately, as the story moves into the next couple of years, it devolves into a summary of the rest of the war, including the amazing rescue of Denmark’s Jews, with an excess of logistical detail and too little human interest, churning through the end of the conflict, its aftermath, and Terry’s later life in the last 100 pages.
An engaging historical novel that addresses big questions—but should have been much shorter.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781734531367
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Scarlet Tanager Books
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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