Intellectually satisfying historical fiction that's also immensely entertaining.
In this final installment in the Guenevere trilogy (Knight of the Sacred Lake, 2000, etc.), Miles gives a provocative twist to the search for the Holy Grail—in a beautifully rendered and elegiac tale of betrayal, the passing of the old order, and the constancy of true love.
The principal characters of the Arthurian legend are soon assembled for this last chapter in the history of the Round Table and Camelot, the seat of the ancient matrilineal rulers of the Summer Country. Arthur is frail but as stubborn as ever, Guenevere still pines for Lancelot, and Mordred, Arthur’s son by the vindictive Morgan le Fay, is ready to assume his royal duties. But both Merlin and Guenevere are uneasy—change is in the air, and it threatens not only Arthur and his Knights, but Guenevere, too: the Christians want to end the worship of the Goddess and her followers who live beneath the Lake at Avalon, and Morgan, as always, is bent on revenge. When Lancelot returns unexpectedly from exile, Mordred, Arthur’s putative heir, is rejected by the Seat of Danger at the Round Table, reserved for “the most peerless knight in all the world,” and young Galahad arrives to claim his place. When Galahad, a devout Christian, sets off with Arthur’s blessing, and followed by all the Knights including Lancelot, to find the Holy Grail in Jerusalem, Arthur, ignoring Guenevere’s pleas, decides to build a far-flung Empire like that of Rome. Such hubris leads to the decimation of the Knights, the destruction of the Round Table itself, along with the glories that once were Camelot, as “fate spins its will.” Yet even so, Guenevere, the heroine of this feminist version of the legend, survives a near-burning at the stake, Arthur and Lancelot’s betrayal, and Mordred’s machinations, to find a sweet peace and love again as she rebuilds her kingdom, keeping alive the “golden dream.”
Intellectually satisfying historical fiction that's also immensely entertaining.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60624-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
