A well-known novel comes to life.
Rescued from a Nazi book burning in Berlin in 1933, a copy of Joseph Roth’s novel Rebellion—the tragic story of a German soldier who becomes a barrel organ player upon returning to Germany missing one leg after World War I—serves as the unusual narrator of Hamilton’s novel. Nearly a century after the book’s publication, Lena Knecht, an artist living in New York City whose grandfather received the volume from the professor who saved it from the flames, returns to Germany with the book in hand hoping to discover the significance of a cryptic map sketched by its original owner on one of its blank pages. Hamilton's artful story teems with subplots that include the account of Roth’s disastrous marriage to Friederike Reichel, a union destroyed by her mental illness and his alcoholism; Lena’s relationship with Armin Schneider, a young Chechen refugee who returns the book to her when it’s stolen shortly after her arrival in Germany and then joins her search; and Armin's sister Madina, who lost her leg in a bombing in Chechnya and is stalked by her dangerous former lover, a violent right-wing nationalist. There are disturbing parallels between the world of Roth’s novel, published in 1924 as the Weimar Republic began to slide toward the Third Reich, and contemporary Europe, where the growing presence of immigrants like Armin and Madina sparks fear and distrust. The novel neatly balances these realistic storylines with fanciful images described in Rebellion’s distinctive, appealing voice, as when the book refers to its “two years on the shelf right next to a small book on insects,” recalling how it was “the happiest time of my life, living with all that buzzing, like a constant summer.” Lena eventually solves the map mystery, bringing the story full circle to an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
A haunting story that provides a welcome reminder of the enduring lives of books.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32066-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL FICTION
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Giffin’s latest charts the course of true love between an American aristocrat and a troubled fashionista.
Almost immediately, readers will guess that Giffin’s protagonist, Joseph S. Kingsley III, a media darling since birth, is a re-creation of John F. Kennedy Jr. In addition to Joe’s darkly handsome good looks, there are many other similarities, such as his double failure of the New York bar exam and his stint as a Manhattan assistant district attorney. But Joe’s late father was an astronaut, not the president, and locations associated with the Kennedys, such as Hyannis Port and Martha’s Vineyard, have been moved to the Hamptons and Annapolis. Instead of a sister, Joe has a protective female best friend, Berry Wainwright. Readers may be so obsessed with teasing out fact from fiction, and wondering if the outcome for Joe is going to be as tragic as JFK Jr.’s fatal 1999 flight, that they may be distracted from the engaging story of Joe’s co-protagonist, Cate Cooper, who is—apart from a superficial resemblance to Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy—largely a fictional creation. When Joe and Cate meet-cute on a Hamptons beach where Cate, a model, is posing, both are immediately smitten. However, the paparazzi are determined to milk every ounce of scandal from the social chasm separating them. On the surface, Cate is the product of a middle-class upbringing in Montclair, New Jersey, but her interrupted education and her forced flight from an abusive home have shamed as well as strengthened her. Like her real-life counterpart, Cate rises in the fashion industry and becomes known for her minimalist style. The couple’s courtship drags a bit on the page despite witty banter and steamy encounters. It is the conflict brewing when their pedigrees clash, and, particularly, Cate’s consciousness of the disparity, that grips us. Whether these knockoffs can avoid the fates of the originals is the main source of suspense here.
An intriguing meditation on the meaning of “meant to be.”Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-425-28664-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
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Absolutely enthralling. Read it.
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A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!
Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends, in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.
Absolutely enthralling. Read it.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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