A historically bold and dramatically lively war tale.
In this historical novel, Jewish musicians running from the Nazis are helped by Roman Catholic priests in a Sicilian village during World War II.
In 1942, Pope Pius XII finds himself in a precarious position, torn between a desire to denounce the atrocities committed by the Nazi and Soviet militaries and the importance of maintaining the Vatican’s neutrality, which allows it to become a sanctuary for Jewish refugees. While rhetorically cautious, the pope acts with great boldness, encouraging Catholic priests to help disenfranchised Jews. LoCoco astutely creates a story about a plan devised with the Vatican’s imprimatur, a scheme to hide Jewish musicians in the fictional Bellafortuna, a Sicilian village with a reputation for its “immense passion for music.” But this is a perilous undertaking—the Jews will hide in plain sight, posing as Italians, assuming new identities, and learning rudimentary Italian. The tale focuses on three Jewish musicians—Alfred Keller, Heinrich Bergman, and Kurt Hofmann—who narrowly escaped death at the hands of Hitler’s henchmen. The plot can devolve into an excess of sentimentality—Heinrich, a talented violinist, rediscovers the joy of music in Bellafortuna, a scene wrought with melodrama. He thanks Annika Adler, the wife of a composer, for helping him overcome his sadness about his mother’s death and reigniting his enthusiasm for music: “You have opened my heart to music again and to life, and you have brought to my mind the memory of my dear mother. For all of that, I am forever grateful.” But the book as a whole is impressively nuanced and articulates an account of the Catholic Church’s opposition to Hitler’s despotism not always accurately reflected in the historical literature. Instead of being cowardly or indifferent, the controversial Pope Pius is portrayed in this novel as diplomatically prudent as well as deeply constrained by the Vatican’s tenuous political power. The author’s fictional story about the musicians and his interpretation of the Vatican’s wartime actions are based on his research, including the “historical fact that Italians hid the Jews.” Whether or not this portrait of the pope is ultimately proved to be correct by historians, it is an impressively balanced one. The tale takes admirable pains to furnish readers with what LoCoco considers a fuller picture of the Vatican’s position during the war.
A historically bold and dramatically lively war tale.Pub Date: June 1, 2022
ISBN: 9780972882491
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Cefalutana Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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