A detailed, absorbing fictional study of friends in an all-too-real Finnish war.
Jordan’s debut novel tells a tale of love and strife during the Winter War of 1939-1940.
The book begins at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany and closes four years later at the end of a war between Finns and Soviets in the Finnish province of Karelia. Eric Björnström, a Finnish historian and diplomat, escorts his daughter Tina to the German capital to watch her childhood sweetheart, Paul, run in the Olympic Games; however, it ends up being a crushing defeat for the young man. They all meet Tom Henderson, a melancholy reporter attempting to distract himself from his own past failures. Tom and Tina are immediately taken with each other. The resulting love triangle later plays out over icy Finnish fields, in the anxious interiors of threatened Finnish homes, and on the battlefield, where Paul’s ears soon ring with “sirens and explosions and the distant cries of the injured.” Paul’s long letters to Tina tell of the horrors and small, unexpected reprieves of the battlefield; for example, he tells of friends being blasted apart by grenades and of “climbing over piles of dead Russians” but also tells of rare, quiet moments in the sauna at camp. Meanwhile, on the homefront, Tina struggles to care for her father amid the chaos and to sort out her desirous and guilty feelings toward Tom and Paul. “People tell you to put the past behind you.” Tom says at one point. “They don’t realize that some things remain forever in the present.” In this debut, the author packs in enough incidents to fill three novels, every one of them aimed at broadening readers’ understanding of the lives and sufferings of average Finns during the Soviet Union’s vicious, unprovoked invasion. English-speaking readers will be grateful for how the author puts this far-off war directly in front of them; again and again, Jordan grounds the story with solid research. However, it’s the book’s evocative language that brings the events of 75 years ago brightly to life.
A detailed, absorbing fictional study of friends in an all-too-real Finnish war.Pub Date: June 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-5985-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
