As history, okay. As polemic, obvious. As historical fiction, merely so-so.
There’s no rest for a late-Renaissance Venetian. When there’s a lull in making a fortune or harassing the infidel, there’s always an intrigue to be made against some other Venetian.
Business executive and debut author Quinn nicely captures the greed-is-good aspect of 15th-century Venetian culture. Explains the swashbuckling Antonio Ziani, who commands a crack marine unit but has had a bit of bad luck and is now the prisoner of an ever-inquisitive Turkish governor, “Our first religion is business. We believe in God, but we do not allow our religious beliefs to force us to do things that make no sense.” That ever-pragmatic Venetian way of life does not preclude Antonio from running off and storming well-defended Turkish positions and doing other brave but questionable things, which proves a source of trouble. Rival Venetian Giovanni Soranzo—of whom, with characteristic portentousness, Quinn writes, “His large forehead made his dominating icy-blue eyes seem smaller, but their menacing gaze disarmed nearly everyone who felt their power”—is pretty sure, for instance, that Ziani has gotten his brother Marco killed for no good reason, and he’s bent on revenge. There’s plenty of time for them to hash out their differences, for the two have years’ worth of work to do in containing the nasty Ottomans, who have conquered Byzantium and are now licking their chops at the prospect of sacking Venice itself. Quinn’s Ottomans are depicted as hungry, and very badly behaved, people who don’t keep their word, except in order to be evilly ironic. Lest anyone miss the point, Quinn suggests in an afterword that modern Americans just might be latter-day Venetians in the face of advancing Islam, forced to “fight alone against their terrible and powerful adversary as they strive to preserve freedom and their way of life.” The dialogue is flat, the set pieces predictable, but Quinn has a good command of period history and accoutrements: think Tom Clancy channeled for those thrilled by galleons and exploding minarets.
As history, okay. As polemic, obvious. As historical fiction, merely so-so.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-31908-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
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