A meticulous, sometimes-brutal look back at a terrible time.
Grant (Year of the Rat, 2011, etc.) weaves a well-researched, fictionalized account of what it was like being a victim of Hitler’s eugenics campaign.
This novel focuses on Finnish twins Kaarle and Laila Tuuri, whose mother, Aamu, dies during their birth. With their fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, the twins are visions of Aryan perfection. Their father, Ahti, has no idea how to raise a girl, so he sends Laila off to live with her aunt in Norway. Her father has Kaarle trained to become one of Finland’s famed ski soldiers, and he spends much of the war harassing first the Russians, then the Germans. Laila isn’t as lucky: she gets captured by the Nazis and is chosen as a guinea pig for Mengele’s eugenics experiments. Throughout the novel, Kaarle seeks to recover his extended family while lending his military expertise to the fight against the Axis, wherever they may be. Grant impressively details conditions at the concentration camps and the eugenics labs, painting a true portrait of what was happening in the conquered territories: “Now that Nordic populations have fallen before the SS,” a Norwegian geneticist muses, “Lebensborn can emerge as an involuntary assembly line until the Aryan empire is complete.” The big blocks of text are sometimes tough to navigate, but the narrative doesn’t overwhelm readers with technical descriptions. While making clear the pain these victims experience, Grant artfully gives faces to the depraved victims of the Nazi juggernaut fueled by a madman’s dream. As a rabbi in a concentration camp explains, “In a mere month you will see brothers and sisters agreeing to become spies against each other for an extra ladle of soup each day.”
A meticulous, sometimes-brutal look back at a terrible time.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4495-7755-1
Page Count: 340
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy,...
Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who’s also a math genius.
Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”—and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched—any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it—and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds—his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced “maths” in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly.
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.Pub Date: June 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50945-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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