A book that’s far more interesting for its insights into Roman history than for its style or storytelling.
Young lawyer Julius Caesar takes on an impossible case that threatens to end his career and his life.
“They chose you because you are, by far, the lesser man, the lesser orator. Because you don’t know what to say or when to say it.” Thus says the great Roman orator Cicero to 23-year-old Julius Caesar, who’s competing against him to be selected to prosecute a case. Thanks to hindsight, we know Cicero’s assessment couldn’t be more wrong, but Posteguillo takes us back to a moment long before Caesar was undisputed master of the world. Though it’s easy now to say Caesar was destined for greatness, Posteguillo shows his fate was far from certain. Caesar is chosen over Cicero to prosecute the corrupt former Macedonian governor Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, and it’s an impossible situation. Though clearly guilty of plunder and rape, Dolabella is a favorite of Roman dictator Sulla and a member of the optimates, an exclusive group in the Roman Senate unwilling to concede power to anyone, especially a young upstart from a lower-level patrician family. The novel traces the history leading up to Dolabella’s trial in 77 B.C.E. and depicts the hidden grudges and motives behind the efforts to ensure Caesar’s defeat. The author describes invading barbarian armies in Gaul, rebellions in Greece, and the brutal silencing of anyone brave enough to speak the truth. He also shows us the hypocrisy of a society that embraced high ideals but accepted violence as part of the political process. What hampers the story is a plodding narrative style and the author’s penchant for cliffhangers that seem better suited for TV. He puts too much potted history in his characters’ mouths, too much language that seems unrealistic or verging on the soap operatic. And yet, at other times, his writing has a strikingly contemporary sound, especially when Caesar makes his closing argument in the trial: “We may call our form of government a ‘democracy,’ but to truly be democratic, our laws, as Pericles points out, must defend the interests not of the very few, but of the majority.” Posteguillo’s story is a reminder that, though more than 2,000 years separate us from ancient Rome, some conflicts haven’t changed.
A book that’s far more interesting for its insights into Roman history than for its style or storytelling.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593598047
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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