A haunting story that provides a welcome reminder of the enduring lives of books.
A well-known novel comes to life.
Rescued from a Nazi book burning in Berlin in 1933, a copy of Joseph Roth’s novel Rebellion—the tragic story of a German soldier who becomes a barrel organ player upon returning to Germany missing one leg after World War I—serves as the unusual narrator of Hamilton’s novel. Nearly a century after the book’s publication, Lena Knecht, an artist living in New York City whose grandfather received the volume from the professor who saved it from the flames, returns to Germany with the book in hand hoping to discover the significance of a cryptic map sketched by its original owner on one of its blank pages. Hamilton's artful story teems with subplots that include the account of Roth’s disastrous marriage to Friederike Reichel, a union destroyed by her mental illness and his alcoholism; Lena’s relationship with Armin Schneider, a young Chechen refugee who returns the book to her when it’s stolen shortly after her arrival in Germany and then joins her search; and Armin's sister Madina, who lost her leg in a bombing in Chechnya and is stalked by her dangerous former lover, a violent right-wing nationalist. There are disturbing parallels between the world of Roth’s novel, published in 1924 as the Weimar Republic began to slide toward the Third Reich, and contemporary Europe, where the growing presence of immigrants like Armin and Madina sparks fear and distrust. The novel neatly balances these realistic storylines with fanciful images described in Rebellion’s distinctive, appealing voice, as when the book refers to its “two years on the shelf right next to a small book on insects,” recalling how it was “the happiest time of my life, living with all that buzzing, like a constant summer.” Lena eventually solves the map mystery, bringing the story full circle to an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
A haunting story that provides a welcome reminder of the enduring lives of books.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32066-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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