An authentic and tense portrait of everyday people dealing with war.
A debut historical novel focuses on the plight of Latvians during World War II.
It is 1940 and some 8,000 people in Latvia are supposed to be singing as part of the annual Song Festival in Daugavpils. But the singing is delayed because President Kārlis Ulmanis has an important message: Soviet troops have invaded the country. When a woman named Mija Adamsons hears this news, she immediately thinks of her husband, Aleks. Aleks is a colonel in the Latvian army. If Latvia is to be engaged in military operations, her husband will surely be involved. Mija rushes to her home in the countryside where she later learns that Latvia is to become a Soviet republic. While Aleks resigns from the army rather than fight alongside the Reds, this is only the beginning of some difficult years for the couple. The Soviets quickly seize power; religion is banned; and many Latvian citizens are arrested. As conditions for people like Mija gradually worsen, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. If the advancing Germans can drive out the Russian invaders, perhaps things won’t be so bad. Yet once the Nazis arrive, it is hardly a cause for celebration. Byram’s story deftly illustrates the sheer terror in Latvia during World War II. How could anyone survive the horrors brought on by these two merciless forces? At one point, Mija feels like she is “imprisoned in an ice tomb.” Aleks, with his military background, comes to realize the sheer madness of the atrocities committed by the Germans (“He understood war, at least he thought he did, until now”). While such sentiments are hardly exaggerations given the circumstances, other details can be more obvious than instructive. Most of the story’s characters tend to express their exact feelings without much room for ambiguity. One man asserts rather unhelpfully that “it’s so difficult to find out anything these days.” Since Latvia is, of course, a contested land during World War II, could readers expect anything less? Nevertheless, even if some facets of the book lack complexity, the author skillfully paints the magnitude of the conflict in all its striking colors.
An authentic and tense portrait of everyday people dealing with war.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73412-200-8
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Russian Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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