A worthy treatment of a history too little known, though nowhere near as delightful or as quirky as Q and ’54.
Odd, spirited, tale of educated Indians, savage Europeans and bad mojo in the American outback at the time of the Revolutionary War.
The Italian fiction collective known as Wu Ming is back, having traversed an odd trail from Reformation-era Europe (Q, 2004, as Luther Blissett) and Hollywood (’54, 2006) to the woodlands of upstate New York. The Iroquois Confederation has been running the show for a few centuries, thank you very much, but now upstart colonists east of the fall line are casting covetous glances at the rich interior of America. Mohawk leader Joseph Brant is determined to keep the Americans away and preserve the English crown, and, though a man more civilized than most of his enemies, he is prepared to use whatever means necessary. So are the enemies, however; in a reversal of the Drums Along the Mohawk school of historical fiction, the Americans are the bad guys (“Ethan Allen was a bloodthirsty brigand…he recruited a gang of criminals, the Green Mountain Boys, and pronounced himself their colonel”). Wise women, sage warriors, British nobles, generals and privates, greedy developers and even a few heroes, figure into the proceedings. The scenes are laid out as tableaux, some reminiscent of colonial-era paintings (“Indians and Highlanders mounted guard at the entrance to the avenue. Further on, the dwellings of the slaves, sun-drenched. Children who were little more than infants rolled around amongst dogs and chickens”), all presenting a very European view of the American essence. The battle scenes are particularly well done, even if the dialogue among Indians is straight from the pages of Karl May. There’s a touch too much channeling of modern sensibilities, too, as when one character muses, “What the fuck do they get out of it, these fine gentlemen from Nobshire.”
A worthy treatment of a history too little known, though nowhere near as delightful or as quirky as Q and ’54.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84467-342-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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