A compelling wine tale that’s hampered by overzealous descriptions.
A girl is determined to preserve the legacy of her family’s winery in this debut historical novel.
The story opens in 1786 with 12-year-old Joliette de Verzat anticipating her first wine tasting with her grandmother. Joliette’s family presides over the Château de Verzat, a vineyard dating from 1515 that produces the finest wine in France. Her grandmother recognizes that the girl has an unequaled nose for wine and that should her father have a son who would inherit the estate, he would depend on Joliette’s astute instincts. Keen to preserve the legacy herself, Joliette is aware that should her grandmother and parents die before she marries, the estate will fall into the hands of a cousin. The narrative then turns to the tale of Henri Detré, a 13-year-old boy destined to be a tanner. Henri has two dreams: to meet his unknown father and to stow away on a ship headed for America. Civil unrest grumbles as the French Revolution beckons. Joliette strives for stability, but will marriage strip her of her independence? Meanwhile, Henri, neither a Royalist nor “a rioter,” makes a startling discovery about his father’s wealth and position. Borchert’s passionate tale is the first installment of the Château de Verzat series. The story is sufficiently multifaceted and open-ended to allow for further plot developments. The devotion of alternate chapters to the novel’s principal characters creates sustained intrigue as to how their lives may intertwine despite the denouement’s being somewhat predictable. The tale pays close attention to historical details—for instance, the author is aware that before 1802, Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville was called Place de Grève. Borchert’s writing strives to be sensually observant. At one point, Joliette relates: “I turned my back to the wind and sniffed. Another fruit, besides the grapes. I sniffed again. Peaches?” Unfortunately, the author’s approach is often excessively descriptive; for instance, her characters unnaturally perform multiple gestures in rapid, staccato succession, including in this passage about a friend of Henri’s: “The veins in his arms bulged as he fisted his hands….He raked his fingers through his hair, flicking water….He jerked his head up.” Despite this close observation, the author writes in short paragraphs that, although effervescent, rarely carry meaningful descriptive weight. Whereas the plot ticks along at an enjoyable pace, Borchert’s struggle to realistically animate the characters she creates becomes tedious.
A compelling wine tale that’s hampered by overzealous descriptions.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 463
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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