A richly atmospheric debut that confronts how art, memory, and silence shape families in the long shadow of the Holocaust.
Knecht braids Holocaust survival, art-world skullduggery, and the perils of youthful defiance into a sprawling multigenerational family saga and debut novel.
Knecht’s novel begins in 1945, and the setting is Poland’s infamous Auschwitz extermination camp, where prisoner Lila Lesser miraculously carries her son Leo out alive (who is later tragically shot and killed) after the Allies liberate the camp. By the 1960s, Lila is raising her granddaughter Isabel in Venice, keeping close ties to her lifelong friend Miriam. Haunted by her husband Albert’s betrayals and his celebrated art collection (along with its murky legacy), Lila remains stubbornly silent about the past. Isabel, restless and daring, grows determined to uncover her family’s secrets—and finds herself entangled with Niccolo, the son of a brutish upholsterer with criminal ties. Their relationship leads her into the dangerous orbit of Signor Gritti and the mysterious “Corbeau,” men whose designs on the Lesser Collection threaten both Isabel and her inheritance. Knecht situates Isabel’s adolescent rebellion against the backdrop of stolen masterpieces, forbidden romances, and Venice’s fading grandeur. The novel adroitly explores, among other themes, how memory and trauma shape survival. Lila reflects on the legacy of the art collection Albert once guarded: “‘You must show them but never sell them,’ Albert said long before the SS discovered her….And Lila hasn’t sold the art, not ever, not even to repay her business debts.” The collection becomes both burden and salvation, a symbol of promises broken and loyalties tested. Knecht excels at evoking atmosphere: At one point, Isabel imagines “willing herself and the woman and the three little dogs to be the royal subjects of a lush Renaissance painting.” Yet the beauty of Venice contrasts sharply with its underbelly of deceit, greed, and lingering antisemitism. Lila’s character, however, is the most resonant; her mixture of stoicism and bitterness grounds the narrative. Isabel’s voice, though sometimes melodramatic, captures the turbulence of adolescence. Secondary figures like Miriam and Morgenfeld add depth, embodying different modes of survival—warmth, denial, and complicity.
A richly atmospheric debut that confronts how art, memory, and silence shape families in the long shadow of the Holocaust.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781961864320
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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