The first part of what Solzhenitsyn has described as "the principal project" of his life's work, an epic study of Russia before, during and after the Revolution, whose "general conception. . .came to me upon graduation from high school," August 1914 describes the opening campaign of the Russian army in East Prussia, its strategic blunders, operational chaos, and general lack of coordination to a degree the Germans could hardly believe, and the bravery of the troops who were finally surrounded. Solzhenitsyn has described his difficulties in gathering source material, since important archives were barred to him; but no significant historiographic faults have yet been noted and, though he has no firsthand experience of pre-revolutionary society, he has achieved a power and freshness which lend credence to the inevitable War and Peace comparisons. Solzhenitsyn parenthetically disputes Tolstoy's belief that it is not men's decisions which make history; the generals (owing to the way tsarist hierarchies fostered incompetence) did not know what they were doing, and in Solzhenitsyn's view these early losses undercut the entire war effort. Solzhenitsyn has always had an acute understanding of bureaucracy, and his own war experience — in particular his almost religious conception of comradeship under fire — animates the chronicle. Other elements are even more directly autobiographical: two of the characters have all the predicates of Solzhenitsyn's parents. The book expresses both Solzhenitsyn's belief in "the vigorous, inexhaustible spiritual strength of Russia" and his contempt for the untruths and abuses of authority, as well as a God-fearingness which should be distinguished from Russian Orthodoxy. One principal is a relatively unsympathetic young revolutionary, to whom Solzhenitsyn imputes a simple-minded "the worse the better" view of the war. The most fully developed characters include General Samsonov, commander of the destroyed army, a victim of broader intrigues and incapacities, and a young staff officer, Vorotynsev, who upholds Solzhenitsyn's foremost value, honesty, in a final explosion. However, as Solzhenitsyn acknowledges, some of the character development is incomplete, because "this is only the initial presentation of a longer work." It is an impressive one, if not as soul-shaking as The Cancer Ward and The First Circle. A Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1972
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1972
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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