A dramatically engrossing and historically searching tale about a powerful duchess.
In 1498, Anne of Brittany pines to marry King Louis XII of France, but considerable political hurdles must first be cleared in this sequel.
Anne is the duchess of Brittany and the sovereign ruler of the land now that her husband, the philandering Charles VIII, has died. She deeply loves Louis XII and he returns her affections. The two yearn to have a child together, but Anne refuses to entertain his offer of marriage until he can legitimately annul his union with Princess Jeanne of France. Jeanne is a decent woman but is grotesquely deformed physically and incapable of bearing the child for whom Louis so desperately pines. Problematically, Jeanne is exceedingly popular with the people, so Louis must tread carefully in dissolving the union. While he was forced by Jeanne’s father to wed her out of practical concerns, he was still at the age of consent (14 years old) and he did consummate the marriage. Louis turns to Pope Alexander VI, reliably corrupt, for his blessing but in return must grant his eldest son, Cesare Borgia, an elevated title and a French princess. Cesare chooses Charlotte of Naples, but she rejects his attentions—she is “one of the most refined maids of honor at Anne’s court,” and he is repulsively coarse as well as infamously dangerous, reputed to have murdered his own brother. Cesare, though, remains obstinate: “The young braggadocio had taken up residence nearby and wouldn’t leave France until he had gotten what he came for: a noble French bride, preferably a princess.” Gaston (Anne and Charles, 2018) continues her dramatic exploration of Anne’s life, and as in the novel’s predecessor, the duchess’s extraordinary travails and triumphs are depicted in lively, expressive terms. In addition, the author’s historical research is scrupulous and exacting, down to the dialogue. Gaston expertly depicts Anne’s—and Brittany’s—predicament (“She would return to Brittany and Louis would follow, should he obtain his annulment. She would not consent to become his wife unless a marriage contract was signed that assured her full rights as sole sovereign and administrator of her duchy”). In addition, the author skillfully explores the intersection of the French world with a budding Italian Renaissance.
A dramatically engrossing and historically searching tale about a powerful duchess.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Renaissance Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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