A blood feud in the long-ago past makes for an unforgettably heart-wrenching story.
In Moran’s historical fiction debut, two brothers’ mutual resentment turns them into brutal adversaries in 6th-century Britain.
Luca and his small family belong to the Dobunni tribe. His brother, Kennan, who’s only a year and a season younger, begrudges Luca’s apparent advantages, such as the education he receives at a monastery. But Luca is just as bitter; their perpetually angry father, Lucanus, unmistakably favors Kennan and reserves most disciplinary beatings for Luca. As the boys grow older, they unleash their hostility against each other in increasingly violent clashes. They’re at odds over a variety of things, including whose particular skills most benefit the family and, once they hit their teens, a girl named Bellica. Meanwhile, “foreign wolves” (tribes such as the Jutes and Saxons) have been taking land and ravaging neighboring villages. The Dobunni pin their hopes on a missing relic (allegedly, a martyr’s finger) that some believe will help them defeat the enemy tribes. This volatile climate may ultimately lead to a confrontation that one of the brothers won’t survive. The historical backdrop in Moran’s tale provides a dynamic setting; tension surges as the Jutes’ and Saxons’ continuing attacks inch closer to the Dobunni lands. But the focus is on the brothers, whose belligerence and savage fights foster a bleak narrative (“as my learning improved, I had less need of my brother’s shadow or the warmth of his shoulder against mine”). The novel is emotionally poignant as well, exploring each brother’s rationale (however misguided) and examining the relationships between Luca and his parents. Although many characters side with Kennan, some show Luca some much-needed warmth, including his younger sister, Minura, burdened with the impossible task of keeping peace between the brothers. The author’s black-and-white artwork brightens the pages with simple but affecting imagery, depicting the brothers facing off and a baby’s tiny hand clutching a thumb.
A blood feud in the long-ago past makes for an unforgettably heart-wrenching story.Pub Date: June 29, 2023
ISBN: 9798850361914
Page Count: 249
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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
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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