A teeming 12th-century tapestry which Penman renders coherent, even eloquent.
This mammoth historical novel dives deep into the undersung saga of the leper king of Jerusalem and his archfoe, Saracen sultan Saladin.
It’s the 1170s, and a small enclave of Frankish colonists known as Poulains are trying to hold on to their feudal fiefdoms in and around the city of Jerusalem, footholds gained during the Crusades in the land they call Outremer—beyond the sea. The main focuses of this multivariegated work, encompassing enough material for a trilogy, are the ruling families of the European Christian interlopers and their Muslim Saracen counterparts. Most attention is paid to Baldwin IV, who becomes king at 13 when his father, Amalric, unexpectedly dies. From an early age, Baldwin exhibits attributes of greatness, including charisma, wit, courage, and excellent horsemanship. His imperviousness to pain is the first symptom of what will soon be diagnosed as leprosy. Baldwin’s strong support system, including his ambitious, embittered mother, Agnes (whom Amalric divorced upon becoming king); his spiritual adviser, William, archdeacon of Tyre; and his staunchest friend, Balian of Iberlin, enables him to overcome or at least manage the depredations of the disease and spearhead the Franks’ ongoing struggles—diplomatic and otherwise—with Saladin. Penman (A King's Ransom, 2014, etc.) excels at depicting medieval warfare and the unintended, often disastrous consequences of the best-laid strategies. She is equally adept at depicting the rivalries and internecine strife that roil Baldwin’s court—peopled by characters who are mostly related to each other by some degree of kinship—finding credible motives for everyone’s grudges. Occasional cutaways to Saladin and his entourage are less detailed but also humanize him, his extended family, and allies. Dramatic set pieces—a wedding in a castle under attack, a future Knight Templar dragged out of a brothel—abound. The religious and tribal conflicts, among both the Christians and Muslims—Kurds, Shiites, and a murderous sect aptly dubbed the Assassins—certainly have echoes for today. This book amply illustrates the extent to which fortune and personality dictated victory, détente, and defeat on both sides.
A teeming 12th-century tapestry which Penman renders coherent, even eloquent.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-16528-3
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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