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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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
© 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.
