An immersive war novel that manages not to become overly depressing.
An unlikely soldier in World War I searches for his son on the Western Front in Andrews’ historical novel.
Forty-six-year-old Major Albert “Ab” Johnson, a newspaperman from Butte, Montana, recently rejoined the Army to serve his country in the Great War. He wasn’t expecting to fight, of course—he thought he was taking a safe supply job in Tours—but he’s just been summoned to Paris, where his fluency in French is needed to aid in gathering medical supplies for the scrambling American divisions on the front. Ab has barely reached the city before a German shell explodes the cafe in which he’s sitting, leaving a ringing in his ears. Ab hopes his proximity to the line might allow him to reconcile with his son Jack Johnson, who bucked family tradition by joining the Marines instead of the Army (and from whom Ab became estranged after making some anti-Marine remarks). Ab isn’t the only one acclimating to life in the combat zone: Arrogant surgeon Arthur Beck of the Navy Medical Corps, gung-ho Marine Carl Larsen, and hospital apprentice Lyle McCormack are all figuring out what exactly is expected of them in this bloody place. Little do they know, they are all headed toward the Battle of Belleau Wood, where a new chapter of Marine Corps mythology will be forged and Ab might (or might not) find redemption. Andrews captures the pain of war in muscular prose, as here when Ab speeds a bleeding soldier to an aid station: “The motorcycle bounces along the road as I race from Lucy to La Voie. I hope I don’t lose any teeth. The wounded private riding in the sidecar moans with each jolt. I’m too busy steering around the worst holes to groan with him.” Andrews clearly knows the time period—and particularly the era’s medical practices—but he largely eschews the usual tragedy of WWI narratives in favor of a more palatable adventure tale. This is one for the war buffs, and particularly those who enjoy Marine Corps lore.
An immersive war novel that manages not to become overly depressing.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798989383580
Page Count: 378
Publisher: 46 North Publications
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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