An intimate investigation of authoritarianism from the Finnish author of Compartment No. 6 (2016).
In the middle of a cold, dark Finnish night, an old woman commences to set down the story of her life. She begins with a portrait of herself as a young girl most at home in nature. These early vignettes have an almost magical quality, and readers who aren’t well-versed in the history of Finland between the world wars might not fully grasp what’s happening as a wild child turns into a fascist young woman. This transition is quite clear by the time the narrator says of herself and her sister, “We figured Nazism was where we belonged. There was only one leader for us, and it was Hitler.” Nazism is, of course, a live topic in American civic life right now, but even as we examine the survival of this philosophy in contemporary culture, most of us remain largely unaware of the extent to which the Nazis found enthusiastic followers outside of Germany before and during World War II. The narrator finds herself near the center of party life when she marries the Colonel, an eager collaborator. The Colonel is many years her senior, and their relationship is a mix of ferocious sexuality, hideous abuse, and luxury during a period of terrible privation. This is not a confession, and there is something horribly fascinating in reading the words of someone who is eager to speak about her Nazi past without apology. But the narrator’s lack of interest in introspection ultimately makes her recitations of events almost boring, especially for readers who don’t have the historical knowledge to follow the shifts back and forth in time. This slim novel works best when it reads like a dark fairy tale or a fable about the day-to-day experience of evil.
Unusual and uneven.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64445-008-6
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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When the newly elected Vice President’s life is threatened, the Secret Service runs to nomadic soldier-of-fortune Jack Reacher (Echo Burning, 2001, etc.) in this razor-sharp update of The Day of the Jackal and In the Line of Fire that’s begging to be filmed.
Why Reacher? Because M.E. Froelich, head of the VP’s protection team, was once a colleague and lover of his late brother Joe, who’d impressed her with tales of Jack’s derring-do as an Army MP. Now Froelich and her Brooks Brothers–tailored boss Stuyvesant have been receiving a series of anonymous messages threatening the life of North Dakota Senator/Vice President–elect Brook Armstrong. Since the threats may be coming from within the Secret Service’s own ranks—if they aren’t, it’s hard to see how they’ve been getting delivered—they can’t afford an internal investigation. Hence the call to Reacher, who wastes no time in hooking up with his old friend Frances Neagley, another Army vet turned private eye, first to see whether he can figure out a way to assassinate Armstrong, then to head off whoever else is trying. It’s Reacher’s matter-of-fact gift to think of everything, from the most likely position a sniper would assume at Armstrong’s Thanksgiving visit to a homeless shelter to the telltale punctuation of one of the threats, and to pluck helpers from the tiny cast who can fill the remaining gaps because they aren’t idiots or stooges. And it’s Child’s gift to keep tightening the screws, even when nothing’s happening except the arrival of a series of unsigned letters, and to convey a sense of the blank impossibility of guarding any public figure from danger day after highly exposed day, and the dedication and heroism of the agents who take on this daunting job.
Relentlessly suspenseful and unexpectedly timely: just the thing for Dick Cheney’s bedside reading wherever he’s keeping himself these days.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14861-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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A historical novel explores the intersection of love and war in the life of Australian-born World War II heroine Nancy Grace Augusta Wake.
Lawhon’s (I Was Anastasia, 2018, etc.) carefully researched, lively historical novels tend to be founded on a strategic chronological gambit, whether it’s the suspenseful countdown to the landing of the Hindenberg or the tale of a Romanov princess told backward and forward at once. In her fourth novel, she splits the story of the amazing Nancy Wake, woman of many aliases, into two interwoven strands, both told in first-person present. One begins on Feb. 29th, 1944, when Wake, code-named Hélène by the British Special Operations Executive, parachutes into Vichy-controlled France to aid the troops of the Resistance, working with comrades “Hubert” and “Denden”—two of many vividly drawn supporting characters. “I wake just before dawn with a full bladder and the uncomfortable realization that I am surrounded on all sides by two hundred sex-starved Frenchmen,” she says. The second strand starts eight years earlier in Paris, where Wake is launching a career as a freelance journalist, covering early stories of the Nazi rise and learning to drink with the hardcore journos, her purse-pooch Picon in her lap. Though she claims the dog “will be the great love of [her] life,” she is about to meet the hunky Marseille-based industrialist Henri Fiocca, whose dashing courtship involves French 75 cocktails, unexpected appearances, and a drawn-out seduction. As always when going into battle, even the ones with guns and grenades, Nancy says “I wear my favorite armor…red lipstick.” Both strands offer plenty of fireworks and heroism as they converge to explain all. The author begs forgiveness in an informative afterword for all the drinking and swearing. Hey! No apologies necessary!
A compulsively readable account of a little-known yet extraordinary historical figure—Lawhon’s best book to date.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54468-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | HISTORICAL FICTION | THRILLER | ESPIONAGE
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