A well-researched and capably written depiction of the Rape of Nanjing and its effects on victims and survivors.
American and Chinese academics face the horrors of invasion in the early days of World War II.
In this debut historical novel, Zheng draws on his experiences as a researcher at MIT to create Chinese-born Calvin Ren and Massachusetts native John Winthrop, who meet as engineering students in Cambridge. They reunite in Calvin’s hometown of Nanjing to work on China’s nascent military aircraft program. Although John leaves behind a fiancee when he travels to China, he becomes close to Chen May, a teenage acquaintance of Calvin’s. She practices her English with John while he shops for antiques in the market. Their relationship never moves beyond friendship and a few kisses, but John is the one May turns to when nearly all her relatives are killed during the Rape of Nanjing by Japanese forces. They lose touch when he returns to the United States, but May survives the war and pursues justice for her city in the aftermath, while John’s legacy provides education for future generations of Chinese girls. An author’s note explains that Zheng wrote the novel in response to a lack of awareness of the Rape of Nanjing, and an appendix provides resources for further reading on the subject. The novel is solidly grounded in historical research, and notable figures, including Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife, Soong Mayling, make frequent appearances. The book also creates a vivid portrait of 1930s urban China, with its blend of traditional practices and Western influences, and Zheng leaves the reader with clear images of the wine houses, steamed rolls, and everyday objects that make up his characters’ lives. The book excels in dramatic and panoramic moments, like the chaotic evacuation of Nanjing after the attack. The storyline is at times too sprawling, filled with the back stories of characters who do little to drive the plot but serve as victims of Japanese cruelty, but on the whole the book effectively puts a human face on one of World War II’s noteworthy tragedies.
A well-researched and capably written depiction of the Rape of Nanjing and its effects on victims and survivors.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944347-00-0
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Killian Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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