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
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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