Philosophically troubling, artistically thrilling, and thoroughly impressive.
Stark, haunting third novel by Yarbrough (Visible Spirits, 2001, etc.) limns a Mississippi Delta community whose destiny is grimly shaped by the war thousands of miles away.
In the summer of 1943, Dan Timms drives a “rolling store” for his shady uncle Alvin, selling snacks and supplies to local farmers while waiting to turn 18 so he can enlist. His father recently committed suicide, perhaps because Dan’s mother was sleeping with Alvin, but more likely because the WWI veteran remained shattered by his combat experiences. Dan’s childhood buddy Marty Stark, sent home from Europe to guard German soldiers at a nearby POW camp, is even more obviously traumatized; he’s a time bomb waiting for the fuse to be lit. L.C., the18-year-old African-American who drives Alvin’s second rolling store, barely acts servile enough to satisfy the white folks and has no intention of donning a uniform to fight for his oppressors. No one’s under any illusions about what life in Mississippi is like for L.C.’s people. “If you were colored, would you die for this country?” Alvin asks the white head of the draft board. “Not unless somebody shot me,” the man replies, grinning. In Yarbrough’s vision, a brutal, unjust social order imprisons blacks and whites alike; among the many superbly complex characters is a desolate father, grieving for his son killed at the Kasserine Pass, who’s also a vicious racist. Dark though the story is, right down to its apocalyptic climax at the POW camp, the author’s unsentimental compassion and technical mastery make for an exhilarating read. Yarbrough cogently develops his themes within a compelling plot and a rich portrait of the small town of Loring, where everyone knows everyone, but no one is merely what they seem. War changes a man into another person, and the enemy is simply a guy on the wrong side. The only meaningful difference, the tortured Marty concludes, is between human beings who are alive and those who are dead.
Philosophically troubling, artistically thrilling, and thoroughly impressive.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-41478-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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