An earnest tribute to immortal characters that doesn’t quite offer enough novelty.
Two of Jane Austen’s supporting characters tell their own stories in McVeigh’s latest novelistic homage.
In Austen’s classic 1815 novel, Emma, the eponymous Emma Woodhouse provides obstacles to her own happiness as she turns her attention solely to those around her. Harriet Smith, Emma’s penniless friend, becomes her unrefined protégé, and village neighbor Jane Fairfax comes off as an aloof object of envy amid Emma’s romantic scheming. In this new novel, McVeigh, whose previous work, Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel(2021), also delved into Austen’s literary canon, attempts to fill in what Harriet and Jane are thinking as Emma deals with the many consequences of her own actions. Their first-person accounts alternate every few chapters, staying on the fringes of Emma’s well-known story and imbue Harriet with a compelling self-awareness; she displays a cunning desire to rise above her station, using the expectations of others against them to befriend Emma and those in her circle: “I believed there to be a vacancy—not for another governess, but for someone youthful and doe-eyed, submissive and easily led, to give the young mistress of Hartfield an object. And though supremely unqualified for the post…I had faith in my powers to appear so.” Jane is not shaded as deeply as a character, but she shows a vulnerability while navigating various suitors’ affections and keeping her engagement to Frank Churchill secret.
McVeigh deviates from the source material by interpolating characters from other Austen novels and changing Harriet’s parentage, and purist fans may object to such alterations. Over the course of the work, the two girls’ stories occasionally intertwine, and the pair appear to have much in common; both are outsiders in the Highbury community by birth and class, for example. However, one may wonder what might have happened if they’d ever had a conversation about Emma rather than with her. Whenever the characters adhere to Austen’s plot points, Emma’s plotline simply becomes a distraction. Harriet’s protracted naïveté and obsession with rising from her station and Jane’s clandestine and imperfect love with Frank allow for some of McVeigh’s strongest prose: “I could not deny the ache in my heart when I remembered Frank’s kisses on the bridlepath—that terrifying temptation to yield—my breaking away—and the desolation I felt, on turning around, to find that he had gone,” reflects Jane at one point. That said, although the setting and tone are certainly era-appropriate, the expansive cast of supporting characters has a tendency to muddle some of the bigger scenes. Harriet is the stronger of the two main players here and exploits the potential for creative liberties; indeed, some readers may feel that she could have led this novel alone, allowing McVeigh to more deeply explore her origins and her ambitions for a life in which she has agency. Jane’s romantic encounters with Frank are sweet respites from all the gossip and social maneuvering, but they do little to make her more dynamic.
An earnest tribute to immortal characters that doesn’t quite offer enough novelty.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-916882-33-1
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Warleigh Hall Press
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2022
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 vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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