bookshelf

FOUR OF A KIND

Name: FOUR OF A KIND
Author: Vanessa Russell
ISBN: 978-1497348936

A WOMEN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

by Vanessa Russell ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 20, 2014

An edifying historical saga for readers interested in the evolution of women’s rights.

bookshelf

Russell’s debut historical novel explores the women’s rights movement through the eyes of four successive generations.

In December 1963, great-grandmother Ruby Wright gathers together her daughter, Bess Wright-Pickering; granddaughter, Katy Pickering; and great-granddaughter, Jesi Pickering. She gives them each the task of writing about their “year of awakening,” or, as Bess explains it, “a year of 4 seasons, where the spring seed of an event is born, grows, matures, and becomes winter wisdom as a life-changing realization.” Ruby, who came of age near the turn of the 20th century, discusses her stifling experiences as a Victorian-era housewife and her participation in the nascent women’s suffrage movement. She often brought her bright, obedient daughter, Bess, to the demonstrations, and the girl readily took up her mother’s mantle, later crusading for women’s rights and the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Her daughter, Katy, reveals a time in the 1940s when she traveled to Georgia, the site of her father’s plantation. There, she attempted to find out more about her father, who died before she was born. In the process, she uncovered shocking secrets, and around the same time, she became pregnant with Jesi, who was born with leg deformities and still requires the use of a brace. At first reluctant to write, Jesi soon divulges her experiences with a black boyfriend during the 1960s’ civil rights movement. In this ambitious novel, Russell vividly portrays the sexism and sense of powerlessness that all four women experienced. Each woman writes five chapters, and the novel alternates between them, sometimes abruptly. The author devotes most of the novel to the two eldest women, but Katy’s and Jesi’s stories are no less complex, and seem shortchanged by the narrative. It sometimes isn’t clear whether a character is writing, remembering past events or reading from journals or letters. Readers may feel that it takes considerable time to get to know each character, but once the women become familiar, the story reads much more smoothly. Despite a few grammatical errors and a somewhat protracted length, the novel manages to enliven and enhance a momentous period in history.

An edifying historical saga for readers interested in the evolution of women’s rights.

Pub Date: July 20, 2014

ISBN: 978-1497348936

Page Count: 496

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Film Productions Halted Due to Coronavirus Worry

- SEEN & HEARD
‘The Nightingale’ Is Reese’s Book Club Pick

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Adaptation of ‘The Nightingale’ Coming in 2027

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.