MacMurray (1921–1997) was supposedly a great Dickinson fan, but with fans like her, who needs hostile, revisionist critics?
The Emily of the title, last name Dickinson, is an annoying, unpleasant genius, and even her genius is questionable in this literary fiction about a young Amherst woman befriended by the poet.
Mistakenly assumed to have inherited her mother’s tuberculosis, Arethusa Chase spends a lonely childhood in her family’s Boston mansion, her only joy the private tutoring she receives. After her neglectful mother’s death, Arethusa’s father takes her on a recuperative visit to Barbados, where she changes her name to Miranda after acting in The Tempest. The Chases move to Amherst, where Mr. Chase is a professor. After her pert resistance to a local minister’s attempt to have her “profess,” Miranda receives an invitation to visit Emily, already a recluse in her father’s house. Soon, Miranda is expected every Monday. At first, Miranda is bewitched by Emily’s unusual wit, but as time passes, she recognizes Emily’s tendency to be needy, selfish, even spiteful. The snatches of letters and poems included do little to improve Miranda’s, or the reader’s, opinion of the shrewish poet. No matter, Emily’s importance fades as Miranda’s loves and career ambitions take center stage. When her fiancé, Davy, dies in the Civil War, he bequeaths to Miranda a foundation to carry out her progressive ideas on early-childhood education. She begins a school with her former tutor. Meanwhile, her cousin Kate dies and Miranda semi-adopts Kate’s young daughter. Miranda’s independence threatens Emily, who is by turns jealous and distant during Miranda’s now less frequent visits. When Miranda falls in love with the executor of Davy’s estate (his wife, shades of Jane Eyre, alive but incapacitated by brain sickness), Emily manipulates Miranda into confiding the graphic details and then writes an anonymous letter to the board of Miranda’s school attempting to expose the affair. Discovering Emily’s betrayal, Miranda ends the friendship.
MacMurray (1921–1997) was supposedly a great Dickinson fan, but with fans like her, who needs hostile, revisionist critics?Pub Date: April 24, 2007
ISBN: 0-316-01760-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.
Based on an actual incident in Nazi-occupied Belgium, Ramzipoor’s debut is a tragicomic account of fake news for a cause.
Structured like a heist movie, the novel follows several members of a conspiracy in Enghien, Belgium, who have a daring plan. The conspirators do not intend to survive this caper, only to bring some humor—and encouragement for resisters—into the grim existence of Belgians under Nazi rule. To this end, the plotters—among them Marc Aubrion, a journalist and comic; David Spiegelman, an expert forger; Lada Tarcovich, a smuggler and sex worker; and Gamin, a girl masquerading as a male street urchin—intend to...publish a newspaper. And only one issue of a newspaper, to be substituted on one night for the regular evening paper, Le Soir, which has become a mouthpiece for Nazi disinformation. Le Faux Soir, as the changeling paper is appropriately dubbed, will feature satire, doctored photographs making fun of Hitler, and wry requests for a long-overdue Allied invasion. (Target press date: Nov. 11, 1943.) To avoid immediate capture, the Faux Soir staff must act as double agents, convincing (or maybe not) the local Nazi commandant, August Wolff, that they are actually putting out an anti-Allies “propaganda bomb.” The challenge of fleshing out and differentiating so many colorful characters, combined with the sheer logistics of acquiring paper, ink, money, facilities, etc. under the Gestapo’s nose, makes for an excruciatingly slow exposé of how this sausage will be made. The banter here, reminiscent of the better Ocean’s Eleven sequels, keeps the mechanism well oiled, but it is still creaky. A few scenes amply illustrate the brutality of the Occupation, and sexual orientation works its way in: Lada is a lesbian and David, in addition to being a Jew, is gay—August Wolff’s closeted desire may be the only reason David has, so far, escaped the camps. The genuine pathos at the end of this overdetermined rainbow may be worth the wait.
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0815-7
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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