An intelligent novelization of a notable life.
A dramatization of the life of Romanian princess Catherine Olympia Caradja.
Princess Catherine is born into her royal status in 1893. Her parents’ marriage was the result of a practical arrangement between two aristocratic families. Her father, Prince Radu Kretulesco, turns out to be a shiftless gold digger, and so her mother, Princess Irene Cantacuzene, decides to divorce the scoundrel. In a fit of stunning revenge, Radu kidnaps Catherine in Paris and stealthily deposits her at an orphanage in London under a false name, and he uses her as leverage to extract a ransom from Irene’s family. Catherine languishes in orphanages for 13 years before her paternal grandmother orchestrates a rescue and she’s finally sent back to her family in Bucharest. A Romanian orphanage is dedicated to her and named Catherine’s Crib, and the princess eventually manages its affairs. She marries a handsome young Romanian prince, gives birth to three daughters, and later suffers several miscarriages. Soon, the political turmoil of the Russian Revolution and World War I engulfs her world. During World War I, she sets up a hospital to combat the deadly spread of typhus (and contracts the disease herself), and she further endangers herself, during World War II, to help Allied prisoners of war by participating in the “largest prison breakout in military annals.” The oppressive Nazi occupation of Romania is eventually replaced by an equally tyrannical Soviet one, and the Communists destroy her family, usurp her wealth, and make her a fugitive in her own homeland. She has no choice but to attempt escape. Debut author Aavang—a friend of the real Princess Catherine—does a remarkable job researching her life and vividly provides fictional imaginings where historical records are empty. Although he unabashedly shows his affection for his protagonist, he avoids hagiographic excess. He also shows how Catherine keeps her sense of humor; for example, after she notices the year on a magazine she’s casually perusing, she comments: “This is the year I escaped from Paris and returned to Romania. How many people do you know have to escape first into and then out of their homeland?” Overall, Aavang’s prose is confident and elegant, and the fact that his subject’s story is cinematically enthralling gives him a notable advantage.
An intelligent novelization of a notable life.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4567-1549-6
Page Count: 500
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
