When describing her life in India as an “endless disorderly feast,” Eleanor might well be describing One Last Look: rich,...
Moore’s (In the Cut, 1995, etc.) fictionalized journal, based on actual published diaries, of life among the Raj in the 1830s and ’40s depicts the convoluted relationship of the British to their Indian subjects.
Lady Eleanor accompanies her brother Henry to Calcutta when he is appointed Governor-General to act as his official hostess (and secret incestuous lover). Also in the household are Eleanor’s younger sister Harriet, their military-minded cousin Lafayette, and a slew of pets and domestic servants. At first, Eleanor, a sensualist at heart, is overcome by a kind of lassitude, a combination of the heat and the strangeness of the new life that throws her into contact not only with Indians but with middle-class Brits for the first time. In contrast, Harriet, always considered a bit dim in their high-born British world, blossoms into a strong, insightful, independent woman, immersing herself in native customs and setting up a laboratory to study the flora and fauna. Gradually, as Eleanor becomes deeply attached to her servants and their world, she begins to see the English role in India in a more complex light. When Henry, a conventional prig despite his sexual proclivities, doesn’t follow Lafayette’s advice about which local ruler to back in Afghanistan, he loses control of the region at the cost of thousands of lives. The scandal of Harriet’s Indian male servant’s gunshot death in her bedroom is covered up, but Harriet’s unspoken intimacy with him is a far greater scandal, even in the eyes of Lafayette, who himself has fathered a half-caste child. When Henry’s term is over (his disgrace over Afghanistan relieved by his new appointment to be First Lord of the Admiralty), Eleanor and Harriet, as dependent sisters, must return to England with their brother. Back on English soil, Harriet withers away while Eleanor (no longer enamored of Henry) survives with the help of her remaining Indian servant and opiates.
When describing her life in India as an “endless disorderly feast,” Eleanor might well be describing One Last Look: rich, lush, scattered, repetitive, and wonderfully satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-679-45041-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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