A wonder-filled novel about the power of words and stories to bring hope to the most difficult situations.
A novel of enslaved people reaching for love and freedom.
Asim's multifaceted oeuvre includes 12 books for children, a collection of poetry, acclaimed works of social criticism, and a short story collection. His majestic second novel is set in the mid-19th century on a plantation called Placid Hall, which is within a hundred miles of free soil. The slaves call themselves the Stolen, and White people, from plantation owners down to children, are referred to as Thieves. Despite living in a society determined to keep the Stolen uneducated and unaware of their surroundings, the enslaved people of Placid Hall hold on to as much of their humanity as possible. They dream of freedom, they fall in love despite knowing they could be separated from their partners or children at any moment, and they believe in the power of words and storytelling. “Our elders taught us that words were mighty enough to change our condition. They whispered seven words into the ears of every Stolen newborn before the child was given a name, seven words carefully chosen for that child alone.” The seven words serve as part prayer and part talisman, but they also give each of the Stolen an identity apart from slavery. Told in quick chapters, many just two or three pages long, that alternate narrators among the Stolen, the novel manages to convey the horrors and vicissitudes of slavery while never compromising each character’s humanity. William is strong and stubborn and hopelessly in love with Margaret. Cato is still grieving the death of his love but begins to see a new future with Pandora. These four, plus Little Zander—who’s always practicing flying away—have to decide if they’re ready to risk their lives for the dream of a better future. Asim demonstrates all a novel can be: soaring and grounded, personal and epic, thrilling and quiet.
A wonder-filled novel about the power of words and stories to bring hope to the most difficult situations.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982163-16-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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