A colorful tale of the brutality of war and the fragility of trust.
Osherson’s historical novel chronicles a clash between Carthaginians and Romans more than 2,000 years ago.
The story opens with a battlefield at Cannae in August of 216 B.C.E. Assessing the upcoming battle are two men: the famed Carthaginian general Hannibal and his servant Nahatum, an orphaned child known as “The Wolf Boy” (“that’s what they’d called him when his guards caught him trying to steal from his tent two years ago back in Iberia”). Although their status in their society couldn’t be more different, these two men become inextricably linked over the course of the novel as they work to defeat the Romans in combat and through plundering. Osherson switches between the two characters’ third-person perspectives; Nahatum is shown to initially revere Hannibal: “Hannibal’s gray eyes blazed, as a lion when he spotted his prey. And the boy burned with desire to be a lion too, to make his master proud.” Although Hannibal is a formidable master with a voice, when angry, that’s like “a lash,” he trusts Nahatum. Things become complicated, though, when Solyphos, Hannibal’s scribe, teaches Nahatum how to read and write and he achieves a certain power among his fellow Carthaginians due to his literacy. The Carthaginians eventually succumb to suspicion, betrayal, and extraordinary violence, making readers question if their enemy is an outsider or within their own ranks. Osherson’s writing can be quite vivid, and at times, it tilts toward the surreal, as in a description of an imminent conflict: “Suddenly, the birds seemed to all sing at once, to bring the morning light with their calls….Those were signals. And then the trees all around seemed to uproot and hurl themselves down the hill.” Overall, the prose is best when it’s rooted in the natural world or specific details of the time period. That said, Osherson is occasionally prone to clichés, such as “the guards threw the boy into the tent like a sack of potatoes.” Still, the story’s clipped pace and the complexity of the two main characters make up for such minor flaws.
A colorful tale of the brutality of war and the fragility of trust.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951896-59-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Adelaide Books
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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