A thoroughly researched and sensitively written wartime drama.
A Russian family struggles through World War II in Parry’s debut historical novel.
In January 1941, Soviet widow Sofya Karavayeva is first-chair violinist at the prestigious Leningrad Philharmonic, and she lives with her son, Aleksandr; daughter-in-law, Katya; and beloved teenage granddaughter, Yelena, in the city. After Aleksandr is arrested by the Soviet secret police and sent to a labor camp, Katya is kicked out of the Communist Party and put to work in a factory, and Sofya is demoted to a position with the Radio Committee Orchestra. Grandmother and granddaughter are safe, however, and soon, each finds love: Sofya with her former lover Vasili Antonov, a navy admiral and recent widower who’s secretly the father of her son, Aleksandr; and Yelena with Pavel Chernov, a handsome peer who, like her grandmother, plays violin. When Nazi Germany attacks the Soviet Union that summer, the men are called to fight for their country while the women struggle on the home front, hoarding food, lining up for dwindling rations each day, and eventually taking in two young children, sweet Alyosha and spirited Sasha, whose parents have been lost to war. Both Vasili and Pavel are constantly exposed to life-threatening danger, while Sofya and Yelena struggle to stay alive in a once-grand city now almost completely depleted of resources. In an author’s note, Parry says that she was motivated to write this novel due to what she saw as a lack of Eastern European representation in World War II narratives, and the result is a well-researched work that incorporates real-life historical figures, such as navy commissars, orchestra conductors, and journalists, as well as fully realized fictional characters with difficulties and triumphs of their own. Although the slow-paced novel tends to get bogged down in abundant details, sometimes to the point of repetition, it remains a compelling story, effectively told through the alternating perspectives of Sofya, Yelena, Pavel, and Vasili.
A thoroughly researched and sensitively written wartime drama.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-267-7
Page Count: 344
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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