Riveting, emotional, and packed with historical factoids.
A young British soldier navigates the horrors of the Nazi blitzkrieg in Belgium and France in Spurlock’s dramatic historical novel.
It’s May 10, 1940, and Hitler has launched his deadly attack on Belgium. British troops are already in France when the king of Belgium asks for British help in combating the Nazi invasion. Pvt. Bill Brooks awakens next to his new French wife, Augusta Dumont, in the small town of Orchies, where Bill’s unit of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, part of the British Expeditionary Force, has been stationed. His older brother, Lt. Jameson Brooks, is the commanding officer of the unit. The Force has been ordered to march immediately into Belgium. Meanwhile, in London, Winston Churchill, a compromise selection, has just been appointed British prime minister. He’s now heading toward Admiralty House to address his War Cabinet. Seated among the ministers are Lord Halifax and previous prime minister Neville Chamberlain. Churchill begins: “Gentlemen…we face the greatest peril our nation has encountered for many centuries. The ruthless Nazi thug war machine strikes.” He knows that Halifax and Chamberlain want to debate the British response to Hitler’s invasions. He continues: “There can be no parlay. Any agreement reached will be violated in short order….There will be no peace talks. Let me repeat myself. There will be no peace talks.” The U.K. must aid its allies and prepare for Hitler to attack the British Isles. Back on the border, the BEF heads into Belgium and hears the first sounds of battle in the far distance. As they reach the first Belgian town, they’re greeted as heroes by the villagers. But it won’t be long before the BEF find themselves being relentlessly bombed by the German air force. In front of them, the Germans are rolling through Belgium, and behind them, the French army is collapsing. Cut off from supply lines, they’re ordered to retreat to Dunkirk for evacuation. Hundreds of thousands of Allied forces are surrounded on three sides.
Spurlock’s tribute to the bravery and determination of the soldiers of the BEF and their rescuers abounds with high-action scenes that bring readers directly into the sounds, smells, fears, and losses on the front lines and includes descriptions of various armaments and strategic maneuvers. The narrative, which takes place over the three-week period leading up to the perilous evacuation at Dunkirk, alternates between the front lines and London, where Churchill must contend with a War Cabinet more comfortable with debate than decision. We experience the war through the eyes of Spurlock’s two main protagonists, Bill, a foot soldier, and Churchill, the statesman, creating a compelling combination of personal drama and governmental strategy. One of the most spellbinding moments occurs when, during the British retreat, Jameson sends Bill back to Orchies to rescue Augusta before the Germans take the town. Spurlock viscerally details the three days and nights the couple struggles through enemy lines on their way to Dunkirk, the only English Channel port still precariously held by the British.
Riveting, emotional, and packed with historical factoids.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798279329632
Page Count: 501
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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