An affecting tale of love and theology.
In this work of revisionist historical fiction set in 12th-century France, the Catholic Church pursues members of a Christian religious sect that adheres to purported teachings of Mary Magdalene.
Zastrais a 17-year-old girl from Limoux in Southern France, and she and her mother, Chloe, are “practitioners of the healing arts.” They are also devout members of a Christian group called the Cathars, which doubts the divinity of Christ, repudiates the Trinity, considers John the Baptist to be superior to Jesus, and follows teachings that were allegedly taught by Mary Magdalene, their “resident saint,” after the resurrection of Jesus. All of these doctrinally unconventional beliefs place them in the crosshairs of a Catholic Church that is relentlessly intolerant of dissent and considers the Cathars to be heretics. Zastra is repeatedly harassed by a lecherous man named Osric; he’s the stepson of the ailing Lord Alphonso, a powerful nobleman, and he stalks the girl “like a hyena, waiting for her to be separated from the pack.” Zastra and Chloe turn to Countess Esclarmonde de Foix, a well-known and influential Cathar, for help, but although her assistance does effectively get Osric out of the picture, it also results in the imprisonment of both Zastra and Chloe, who become Lord Alphonso’s personal healers. Chloe eventually starts a torrid romance with the nobleman, and she finally falls in love with him. It’s a tryst that, if discovered by Alphonso’s embittered wife, Fulgencia, or anyone else, could spell disaster for both her and her daughter.
Over the course of this book, Malmed vividly brings the precarious lives of the Cathars to life, and he effectively explains the sect’s emphasis on empowered women: “The Hebrew bible has many wonderful women whom you ignore: Ruth, Deborah, Moses’ wife, Zipporah, many,” Chloe explains to Alfonso at one point. “Yet you Catholics hold us women in low regard and your priests never speak of the Hebrew women.” The author not only deftly limns Cathar beliefs, but also describes, with a tantalizing sense of plausibility, the manner in which those beliefs were birthed by a proselytizing Mary Magdalene in Languedoc after she escaped capture by the Romans. In place of a more patriarchal church, the Cathars not only embrace the feminine aspect of the soul, but also advocate for true peace and love. However, Malmed furnishes more than just academic fodder for contemplation; he also constructs a moving, dramatic tale of vulnerable love. Chloe’s romantic feelings for Alfonso, in particular, are depicted rhapsodically: “As he was finishing something that sounded like the beginning of a declaration of love, he pulled her to him and kissed her full on the lips. She did not resist. She felt stirrings throughout her body. Was she some helpless young girl feeling things for first time?” Thankfully, the author resists the temptation to take a polemical direction and lecture readers about misogynistic tendencies of the Catholic Church. Instead, Malmed lets the story unfold without providing excessively moralistic commentary.
An affecting tale of love and theology.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Toplink Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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