Darkly entrancing tales whose pages bleed struggle, trauma and madness.
A new edition of the late author’s macabre stories set along the Eastern Front during World War II.
A desperate German SS officer stumbles naked from a frigid river, trying to flee the Russian tanks murdering his countrymen on the other side. A Ukrainian Jew claws her way through a pit of human corpses to escape a massacre doled out by Nazi machine guns. A war-weary German soldier has a strange vision of Christ while nearby his comrades are hacked to pieces by horse-mounted Cossacks. These are just a few of the grim scenes that make up Schneider’s (Madness Without End, 1994, etc.) second volume of short stories. Drawing from the epic clash between Nazism and Stalinism, the author masterfully weaves history and fiction to create a nightmarish vision of “cauldron” warfare—tiny pockets where encircled Germans hold out against the Red Army. In the midst of the blood, mud and terror, the book’s characters confront the chaos of war with only the slightest grip on their sanity. Broader themes of duty and vengeance seep to the surface. A German officer assigned the task of killing Jews finds the job distasteful, but reconciles it with cold professionalism—“To rid one’s self of one’s enemies was a responsibility that had to be borne.” A member of an all-female Russian tank crew witnesses the grisly retribution on Germans who committed atrocities when the war was going their way. Whether there is a real victor in these stories remains unclear as both sides emerge polluted from the conflict. The author’s use of simile to depict the horrors of battle is a stylistic achievement—dead Germans lie with “shoulders rising up from the ice like men caught turning over in their sleep,” while executed Russians dangle from long ropes “like the strings of a harp.” Some readers may be put off by the book’s violence and abrupt shifts in perspective. But the stories mirror their setting—the bewildering, terrible meat-grinder that was the Eastern Front.
Darkly entrancing tales whose pages bleed struggle, trauma and madness.Pub Date: June 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-0964238916
Page Count: 339
Publisher: Neue Paradies/NPV
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
