A finely shaded portrait of desire, will, and the complex entanglements of love, set against cutting social commentary from...
The psychoemotional precision of Maupassant in an elegant new translation by celebrated translator Howard.
Olivier Bertin is the most sought-after portraitist in Paris. Exalted not just for his talent and refined technique, but also the ease with which he blends with Parisian society, he is handsome and charming, but, though he never lacks for admirers, he has never loved—until he's thunderstruck by the sight of a lovely young woman in mourning clothes at a party and contrives to paint her portrait and, with luck, seduce her. Soon Anne, the comtesse de Guilleroy, a canny, resourceful woman, married with a young daughter, comes to sit for him. After minimal resistance or moral questioning, Anne accepts that she returns the painter’s affections and bears no remorse as they embark on a passionate affair that, though Anne remains married to the oblivious count, lasts for many years and settles into the comfort, habit, and thoughtless affection of a contented marriage. Now a young woman herself, Anne’s daughter, Annette, returns to Paris from her childhood spent at her grandmother’s estate in Eure, and, though Anne is pleased to have her home, she is increasingly haunted by her dissipating youth and distressed by comparisons of their beauty: judgments which generally favor the younger woman. Olivier, also realizing the consequences of passing years—on his body and prevailing artistic tastes—feels a surge of renewed passion for his mistress on Annette’s return, seeing in her daughter all he admired in Anne when their love was still new. It’s here that Maupassant best depicts, with meticulous care and nuance, the neuroses and internal struggles of these lovers as they grapple for control over their emotions and the unstoppable onrush of time.
A finely shaded portrait of desire, will, and the complex entanglements of love, set against cutting social commentary from a realist master.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68137-032-3
Page Count: 221
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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