A skillfully rendered, if occasionally overwrought, portrayal of resolve during and after war.
This fictional family saga leading up to and through World War II is a finely detailed story of grit and survival, a story more universal than unique.
To call Revak’s debut a novel is a little misleading. While he uses novelistic techniques, this is really the true story of the Revak family, stretching back to the early years of the last century. We begin in early 1920s Scheindorf, a village in Hungary/Romania (boundaries are always shifting), with Gertrude Revak and her only child, Stefan. Stefan Sr. is in America, trying to earn enough money to bring them over. Stefan is a good son, old beyond his years, and he and his mother are hanging on grimly. Defeated by immigration laws, Stefan Sr. returns to Scheindorf. They are a family again and begin to prosper. Stefan marries Maria Ditzig, and they have two daughters. Everything is good, but as always, it does not last. Comes the war, and Stefan is drafted into the German army. Stefan, no Nazi, is appalled by every aspect of the war. And eventually the Revaks will have to flee Scheindorf, becoming displaced persons. The war ends, and Stefan frantically searches for his family. After a hair-raising effort, he becomes a POW, lost in the bureaucracy. (His eventual release involves an amazing coincidence that Revak assures us is true.) By the 1950s—Revak himself was born shortly after the war—the Revaks have reached the promised land of the USA. The book is well-written. Sometimes plot points—obstacles to be faced, tearful anxieties and then reunions, gut-wrenching disappointments—seem to be hammered home a little too hard. There is a balance here of cruelties and kindnesses that make these bromides real—human nature writ large. One lesson is that the aftermath of a war is almost as bad as the war itself. Includes a timeline, character list, and bibliography.
A skillfully rendered, if occasionally overwrought, portrayal of resolve during and after war.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-942545-70-5
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Legacy
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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