A forceful attempt to plumb the heart of evil. Lourie, a novelist (Zero Gravity, 1987, etc.), translator, and the author of a series of nonfiction books on modern Russia, brings great knowledge to bear on this imagined record by Stalin. In straightforward prose, his Stalin traces with no hint of sentimentality his childhood, his clashes with a drunken, abusive father, his early hopes (quickly dashed) to be a poet, and his embrace of Bolshevism in prerevolutionary Russia as a likely path to power. Stalin is above all things shrewd, calculating, without hesitation. His wary relationship with the cunning Lenin, his ruthless attempts to ceaselessly gain more power and displace those others closer to Lenin, his clashes with the party intellectuals, whom he scorns, are all recounted in rapid-fire manner. Because Stalin is supposed to be setting down these memoirs in the ’40s, long after he’s gained power, his recollections of his long years in the underground, the coming of the revolution, and the early days of the Communist state are repeatedly interrupted by his obsessive musings on Leon Trotsky. Lourie’s Stalin is consumed by hatred and fear of Trotsky, the true revolutionary and a figure once seen as Lenin’s heir. Distrusting Trotsky’s principles, fearful of his influence, Stalin argues, again and again, his case against the exiled Trotsky, and plots to have him killed. Lourie catches, in the laconic tones of Stalin’s self-satisfied recollections, his pure ruthlessness; his absolute contempt for life; his furious need for power; his scorn for those willing to be led; his hatred of principles, and his exuberant nihilism (“I feel nothing because nothing is all there is to feel”). Gradually, without melodrama, Lourie creates a convincing portrait of a figure for whom, eventually, only absolute power could stave off terror. His version of Stalin’s warped soul subtly demonstrates how true evil is all too human in its origins.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-58243-004-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Urgent moral questions underlie a captivating mystery.
Sequestered at a boarding school during World War II, a rebellious teenager confronts secrets, lies, and danger.
Published in Hungary in 1970, and translated into English for the first time by Rix, this intricately plotted novel by Prix Femina Étranger winner Szabó (1917-2007) (Katalin Street, 2017, etc.) complicates a predictable coming-of-age tale by setting it in perilous times: War rages, patriotism incites bitterness and bigotry, and a clandestine resistance movement stealthily arises. When 14-year-old Gina is sent suddenly from her home in Budapest to an elite religious school in the provinces, she feels deeply bereft: of her beloved governess, who was forced to return to her native France; of her aunt’s delightful tea dances; of encounters with a handsome lieutenant with whom she is infatuated; and, most of all, of her father, whom she loves so deeply that she “felt the world complete only when they were together.” Protected, indulged, and self-absorbed, Gina suffers protracted (and somewhat irritating) adolescent angst. She hates the academy: Once a medieval monastery, it looms like a fortress; girls, dressed in black uniforms, their hair braided unfashionably, are forbidden to bring jewelry, scented soaps, or even toothbrushes from home. Obedience to Christian precepts and school authority is strictly enforced—and, by Gina, repeatedly flouted. She breaks rules, antagonizes her teachers and classmates, and mocks rituals and traditions, including the girls’ veneration of a statue they call Abigail, which has the uncanny power to know everything that happens at the school and offer warnings and sage advice. “All my life I have been a wild thing,” Gina reflects. “I am impatient and impulsive, and I have never learned to love people who annoy me or try to hurt me.” But when her father, visiting unexpectedly, reveals the reason he had to send her away, she vows to behave and realizes that Abigail is watching over her. Far from a supernatural being, Abigail’s real identity, Gina believes, is “someone inside these fortress walls who lives a secret life.”
Urgent moral questions underlie a captivating mystery.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68137-403-1
Page Count: 360
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Complex, epic, and rich in historical detail—an uplifting story of finding friendship behind enemy lines.
During World War II, five Americans head to Nazi-occupied France on a secret mission for the OSS, but only four return.
Twenty years later, OSS case officer Alistair Renault finds a clue in a history book that the missing member of their group might have survived after all. He flashes back to the beginning of the operation, when he first assembled the team he dubbed “Dragonfly”—three men and two women who were chosen for their special skills and secret connection to the war. The five recruits bond in training, but once on their mission, they split up to avoid being caught by the enemy and communicate by making marks on a mural painted on the courtyard wall of a convent. Their cover stories offer surprising glimpses of daily life for the French and their German occupiers. (And a character list at the beginning of the book helps keep their real names and aliases straight.) Christoph Brandt, a track-and-field coach who couldn’t be drafted to the American military due to his missing thumb, learns firsthand how the Hitler Youth are taught to bully. He ingratiates himself with the Nazis by tutoring the son of the head of the Abwehr German intelligence agency in France. But the Nazis won’t be fooled for long. Civil engineer Samuel “Bucky” Barton risks being discovered by Christoph’s old friend from his hometown who betrayed his country to join the Third Reich. Working side by side with the enemy, the Americans are surprised to learn that some of the Nazis are not what they seem. Tired, disillusioned, and looking for redemption, they blur the line between friend and foe, giving Dragonfly both a way into the organization and a way out of the war.
Complex, epic, and rich in historical detail—an uplifting story of finding friendship behind enemy lines.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-53873222-9
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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