An informed, imaginative tale that adds some romance to a well-researched war story.
A young woman in World War II France joins an undercover operation in this debut historical novel.
At the start of Kensington’s story, the protagonist, Katrinka, is in a terrifying bind. It is 1944 in Nazi-occupied France and some German deserters have taken her to a home where she is about to be raped. The Germans have killed her Burmese-British mother and her stepfather, an American archaeologist who worked in Switzerland. Katrinka fights off an attacker and flees and is soon rescued by Wolfe Farr, an American sergeant. Farr is part of Operation Jedburgh, a combined British, American, and French mission to aid the Resistance. More than that, Katrinka’s father, Remi Amparo, is a Portuguese sea captain who is about to deliver plastique (plastic explosives) to the Jedburghs. When Farr takes Katrinka back to meet the others, she is surprised to see Wills Nye, a Briton who used to work on Amparo’s ship and now is with the Jeds. Nye wants Katrinka to retrieve the plastique from her father’s vessel, even though the assignment is outrageously risky. She agrees, but demands Farr accompany her. On this and subsequent undertakings, she wrestles with many dangers and lingering demons, and a growing attraction to both Nye and Farr, which all freely act on. While the end of the war is tantalizingly close, Katrinka travels to Asia to find her true soul mate. Kensington’s breezy novel tackles a captivating aspect of World War II, the parachuting guerrilla warriors that constituted Operation Jedburgh. The provocative story has a die-hard survivor as its heroine, described by Nye in this way: “She had an instinct for survival, naïve bravery, and a rather wild, almost savage unpredictability that was perfectly suited for the job.” The sequence of events, largely between D-Day and VE Day, is well-plotted and often exciting, with the international cast fitting in seamlessly with historical events. This is also a love story with no shortage of sexual encounters; in fact, there are probably a few too many. But the book never loses its seriousness about the war, with a harrowing section in London serving as an effective reminder of the populace’s suffering.
An informed, imaginative tale that adds some romance to a well-researched war story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78901-862-2
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Troubador/Matador Publishers
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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