A twist on angels and ministers of grace that feels more like a mercenary exercise than a fully fleshed-out adventure.
Three notorious villains protect a carpenter, his virgin wife and their newborn son as they flee the wrath of their Roman pursuers.
Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2010, etc.) hones his writing chops in this latest take on history’s mysteries, but the results lack the unabashed exuberance of his earlier work, despite a fair bit of swashbuckling. Here he tackles the New Testament, circling in on the Biblical Magi, the Three Wise Men from the Gospel of Matthew. The ringleader here is Balthazar, a hunted fugitive known far and wide as “The Antioch Ghost” for his slippery nature. Captured by a clever Roman captain, Balthazar is brought before mad Herod the Great to suffer for his crimes. In Herod’s dungeons, Balthazar meets kindred spirits Gaspar and his partner Melchyor, two swordsmen for hire. The trio exchange clothes with the real wise men and make their escape to Bethlehem, where they’re attacked with a pitchfork by Joseph and accused of blasphemy by the Virgin Mary. After this auspicious introduction, it’s a fast-paced dash across 200 miles of biblical geography to safety in Egypt. Grahame-Smith throws lots of obstacles in the path of his ragged band, including Balthazar’s tormented memories of his murdered brother, Herod’s approach to solving his messiah problem (the infamous Massacre of the Innocents) and a malevolent Magus with mystical powers and murderous ambition. And that’s before the walking dead (naturally) show up. It’s an interesting juxtaposition to place this anti-religious thief against this heavy religious backdrop—“Either I’m right and he doesn’t exist, or you’re right and he’s the kind of God who watches children die,” Balthazar scolds Mary. But while Grahame-Smith has already sold the script to Warner Brothers, the novel feels less cinematic than its inevitable movie adaptation.
A twist on angels and ministers of grace that feels more like a mercenary exercise than a fully fleshed-out adventure.Pub Date: April 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-446-56309-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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