The narrative might have been more interesting had the author focused on the relationship between the title character and...
Edgar Allan Poe, master of the gothic tale, becomes shrouded in even more gloom in Cullen’s (Reign of Madness, 2011, etc.) insipid historical novel about his relationship with fellow author Frances Sargent Locke Osgood.
In the winter of 1845, Osgood finds herself relying on friends Russell and Eliza Bartlett for food and lodging while her philandering husband, portrait artist Samuel, is off with his latest romantic conquest. Although she’s had some success with her writing—Puss in Boots and her poetry—Osgood worries about supporting her two young daughters. At a gathering of New York elite, she meets Poe, who admires her talent. Following widespread publication of "The Raven," Poe has become the most famous and feted writer in America. He’s also despised by many for his scathing reviews of their literary efforts and his air of superiority. The fact that he married his first cousin, Virginia, when she was only 13 supplies fodder for the gossip mills and, eventually, so does the relationship that develops between Osgood and Poe. Although they try to mask their attraction, they spend time together with his mother-in-law/aunt and Mrs. Poe, who is desperately ill and annoyingly childish. Osgood is commissioned to write a piece about the Poes’ lives, but the plans fall through; however, it doesn’t end her relationship with the Poe family. Even though she’s uncomfortable with her situation, and suspects that Mrs. Poe’s need to compete with her for Poe’s attention is more ominous than mere jealousy suggests, Osgood is unable to break away. The pair continues to communicate in the form of published poems, during arranged outings and at social events, but their love is further complicated by public disapproval, Mrs. Poe’s decline, Samuel’s brief reappearance, a life-altering decision and harrowing near-death experiences. Although Cullen attempts to portray Osgood and Poe as sympathetic characters, it’s difficult to identify with either as they teeter back and forth between feelings of guilt, anguish, fear and defiance.
The narrative might have been more interesting had the author focused on the relationship between the title character and her husband.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0291-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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