An engrossing and humane novel.
Prose meets power in a tale of Machiavelli and Borgia.
In 1502, the Republic of Florence is surrounded by enemies, particularly Cesare Borgia, who is the Duke of Valentinois and Romagna and son of the Pope. The Republic sends Niccolò Machiavelli as both envoy and spy to find out what Borgia, nicknamed Valentino, is up to. This is a most dangerous business, as rumors abound regarding the duke’s cruelty. He denies to Machiavelli that he had his own brother killed, for example, but doesn’t mind at all that people think so, as long as they fear him. “Fear is stronger than all cannons,” he says. And he even has his own private executioner. Valentino recognizes Machiavelli’s talent as a writer and proposes that the envoy write his story: “I will tell you all my secrets, and you will give them shape with words,” making sure to include “details, observations, insinuations, and malice.” Meanwhile, the duke has imprisoned and sexually abuses Dianora Mambelli, whose “beauty is her condemnation.” Machiavelli secretly meets with her and learns that she wants her captor dead. But if their growing friendship becomes more than platonic and Cesare finds out, their lives are imperiled. The novel paints Machiavelli in a sympathetic light: Yes, he is a skilled writer who puts the duke’s deeds into fine prose, exaggerations and all. But he is in a difficult position where he could be killed at any time. Late in the story, Cesare expresses satisfaction: “Now that I know you can write it the way that I want, I will let you live.” The eventual product of this whole messy business comes after the deaths of the main characters, and it lives on today as The Prince, as cynical a book about gaining and keeping raw power as any that exist. Although Machiavellian refers to scheming for power, the poor guy was only the messenger who was disgusted by his boss and at his mercy. There are quite a few brief passages in Italian, mainly snippets of poetry, with translations in the endnotes. Luckily, they aren’t critical to the story’s flow. Se leggi l’italiano è perfetto. But if you don’t read Italian, you won’t lose the thread by skipping over them and checking them out later.
An engrossing and humane novel.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9798889660149
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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