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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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