A moving tale about the irrepressible tide of history and the fates of the individuals subjected to it.
In Rozycki’s historical novel, Jewish brothers in 1939 Poland are forced to abandon their professional ambitions when the Nazis invade.
Brothers Daniel and Ian Ciszek both have big futures planned: Daniel, the older of the pair, is a budding architect and has just written a manifesto that he hopes will change the face of the industry and attract enviable commissions in Warsaw. Ian is headed to Nancy, France, to begin studying engineering. However, these aspirations are waylaid by historical forces bigger than both of them when Hitler’s forces invade Poland, a catastrophe affectingly depicted by the author. In dire need of money and a place to live, Ian joins a group of communist revolutionaries and is drawn into a dangerous plan to hijack a cigarette truck. He falls in love with the beautiful Alicia, but she remains an exasperating enigma to him; even her name, he learns, isn’t real. Meanwhile, en route to see his father Joseph and transport him to safety, Daniel, in short order, finds himself a solider in the Polish Army, captured by the Germans, and sent to a gulag in Siberia. He manages to lift himself out of the “endless line of identical days” by joining a group of engineers building a secret tunnel and also finds love with Nadhya, a literary scholar pushed into exile. Rozycki doesn’t break any new historical or literary ground here—in fact, this is a pastiche of wartime tales with which most readers will be familiar. However, the story doesn’t read as stale because the plight of the brothers is conveyed so poignantly. Ian is the more fascinating of the two protagonists—on the one hand, he was raised to take great pride in his Polish citizenship, and on the other, he is stung by the vicious antisemitism of his fellow countrymen, a predicament that leaves him conflicted about his nation’s fate at the hands of Hitler. This is a dramatically lively novel as well as a historically rigorous one.
A moving tale about the irrepressible tide of history and the fates of the individuals subjected to it.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781592113866
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Addison & Highsmith Publishers
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A promising blueprint for a book that didn’t quite get written.
When their father dies on the cliffs of his California estate, estranged half-siblings unite to investigate possible foul play.
As Dave’s seventh novel opens, the reader learns something the characters don’t know: Hotel magnate Liam Noone did not fall by accident. He was pushed—by whom and for what reason are unclear. The police have deemed it an accident and closed the case, but his son, Sam, is not so sure. Though he hasn’t seen his half sister, Nora, in years, he shows up at her workplace in New York to ask her to go with him to California to investigate. This part of the story is told by Nora in the first person. We get a lot of information about Nora—she has recently lost both parents, she’s an authority on neuroarchitecture, she is engaged to a New York chef but has an ex in the wings—but somehow don’t get much of a feel for her as a person as she and Sam race around investigating leads and having defensive, snappy conversations. A second narrative thread begins 50 years in the past and follows the development of a romance between Liam and a woman named Cory, who is not one of his three ex-wives, nor is she a woman named Cece with whom he had a mysterious connection. The novel relies on the tension created by all these missing puzzle pieces to plunge swiftly forward, but there’s nothing really at stake—no strong suspects, no wrongly accused, no contested inheritance; it’s all just digging up the secrets of a dead person so his children can understand him now that it’s too late. Actually, nobody really understands each other in this book, and as the characters suspiciously keep each other at arm’s length, the effect extends to the reader as well. Other potentially interesting topics—neuroarchitecture (designing spaces that support emotional well-being), the high-end hotel business—are similarly set up but not explored.
A promising blueprint for a book that didn’t quite get written.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781668002933
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
