Despite a rather abrupt resolution to the central mystery, Kearsley’s tale is lush with romantic and ghostly threads.
Why is the ghost of a 2nd-century Roman sentinel guarding an archaeological site? And why is he following Verity Grey?
First published in 1997, Kearsley’s book still pleases with its deft blending of romance and the Gothic. Archaeologist Verity Grey has made her professional mark and even landed a secure position at the British Museum. But when her charming ex-boyfriend Adrian calls, Verity is easily lured to Scotland with promises of archaeological adventure. From the moment she boards the train, Verity’s world becomes mysteriously ominous. The Gothic atmosphere begins to swirl with the moors, a dark house lit by a single candle, and shadowy horses thundering through the night, wakening our heroine. Once Verily arrives at Peter Quinnell’s home, she meets the rest of the crew. In his 70s, Quinnell is still handsome and brilliant yet discredited by his fellow archaeologists, who lament his mad search for the 2nd-century marching camp known as Legio IX Hispana. Charismatic as ever, Adrian has his eye on every pretty woman, including Peter’s granddaughter Fabia, the photographer who seems to know very little about archaeology. Verity’s own eye is drawn to the darkly handsome, mysterious David Fortune, an archaeologist from the local university. As the team hunts for the remains of the Roman camp, however, someone seems to be intent upon sabotaging the hunt. Indeed, the dig itself seems haunted by a Roman sentinel who speaks only to a young, possibly psychic boy named Robbie. The tension mounts as Verity and David’s romance intensifies and the sentinel demands more from Robbie, warning against dangers and urging caution. But what is the source of the danger?
Despite a rather abrupt resolution to the central mystery, Kearsley’s tale is lush with romantic and ghostly threads.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4022-5870-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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