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Đang hiển thị bài đăng từ Tháng 3, 2019

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende's epic of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath

Allende’s fluidly written saga conveys her deep familiarity with the events she depicts, and her intent to illustrate their human impact in a moving way. The scope spans most of the lives of Victor Dalmau, a Republican army medic in 1936 Spain, and Roser Bruguera, a music student taken in by Victor’s family and, later, his brother Guillem’s lover and the mother of Guillem’s child. The story follows them over nearly sixty years, beginning with the tumult of the Spanish Civil War. Guillem is killed fighting against the Fascists, news that Victor can’t bear to tell Roser initially. After surviving separate and terrible circumstances that leave them refugees in France, where authorities treat them with contempt and worse, the two marry for practical reasons in order to join Pablo Neruda’s mission transporting over 2000 Spanish exiles to Chile aboard the S.S. Winnipeg . In Santiago, the Dalmaus find many Chileans sympathetic to the Spaniards, while others make them unwelcome. With a poetic ...
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The Secret

The Secret

The 2018 Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction - Winner and Finalist

The news recently arrived about the historical novels honored via the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction, so without further ado... Louisa Hall's Trinity  (Ecco, 2018) is the winner of the 2018 Prize.   From the press release:  "The novel explores Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, through his interactions with seven imagined characters from 1943 to 1966. Speaking in 'testimonials,' the characters concentrate more on their own lives despite the major world events unfolding around them...  Excellent historical fiction has the power to reveal emotional truths that history cannot, and Trinity does just that through its ingenious form and compelling prose." And the finalist for 2018 is The Verdun Affair  by Nick Dybek (Scribner, 2018). From the press release:  "Set in Verdun, France and Bologna, Italy in the aftermath of World War I (with a small portion in 1950s Hollywood, California), the chief protagonists are American. A young man ...
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The Latecomers by Helen Klein Ross, an American country-house saga with a difference

With understated elegance, T he Latecomers braids many coming-of-age stories into one. First, we have Brighid “Bridey” Molloy, an Irish teenager whose fiancé dies on the ship from Liverpool in 1908, leaving her alone, and pregnant, in bustling New York City. Then there’s Sarah Hollingworth, the privileged daughter of a Connecticut brass-works owner, who becomes Bridey’s employer. Vincent is Sarah’s adopted son, and his view of his world, as he grows from childhood to adolescence and beyond, is realistically evoked as well. These three lives, and others, are linked over generations through a large house and the two secrets it holds. The story also brilliantly depicts the coming-of-age of the 20th century as new technologies are introduced. The plot moves smoothly across this large swath of time. The book’s first part opens in 1927, at the deathbed of Sarah’s father, Benjamin Hollingworth, as the family doctor quietly drops the late patriarch’s medicine bottle into a hole in the wall of...
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A Comedy of Errors: an essay by Alan Bardos, author of The Assassins, a historical novel about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

I always get new insights into history and historical fiction writing from authors' guest posts, and the following essay by Alan Bardos is no exception.  He discusses the lesser-known background to a pivotal historical event and how he worked fictional characters into the story.  Thanks to Alan for contributing his essay and photos, and I hope you'll enjoy reading along. ~ A Comedy of Errors Alan Bardos  The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was one of history’s greatest turning points, but it happened by accident. Everyone knows the story ends with the death of the Archduke and his wife, Sophie, putting into play the diplomatic crises that lead to the First World War. It is perhaps less well known that the events leading up to the assassination were a terrible comedy of errors that culminated in a world-changing tragedy. It was this combination of tragedy and comedy that first drew me to the story and, I hope will draw people to a novel about the assassination, d...
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Make Me a City by Jonathan Carr, an eclectic fictional portrait of 19th-century Chicago

Carr’s intricately woven debut evokes the history of nineteenth-century Chicago while showcasing important but little-known historical figures and fictional people from different walks of life who contribute to its development. The chronologically arranged chapters vary in style, from straightforward narrative to spot-on pastiches of news articles and diaries to excerpts from a compiled “alternative history” text whose contents are cleverly self-referential. In 1800, Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable, a trader of part-African descent and the marshy land’s first nonindigenous resident, plays a fateful chess game. Other significant characters include schoolteacher Eliza Chappell Porter, developer John Stephen Wright, and engineer Ellis Chesbrough. Their and their descendants’ lives are full of incident, including the Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Great Chicago Fire. While their personalities are colorfully rendered, the depictions of Native Americans aren’t terribly nuanced. More eclectic ...
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Book review: American Princess: A Novel of First Daughter Alice Roosevelt, by Stephanie Marie Thornton

In a novel about a famous presidential daughter who was one of the leading political wits of 20th-century America, the heroine’s narrative voice is critical. Fortunately, in American Princess , author Stephanie Marie Thornton channels Alice Roosevelt’s vibrant, opinionated, sometimes caustic disposition in a thoroughly convincing way, maintaining it across 400-plus pages. The woman called “Princess Alice” by the Washington scene, and whose occupation was listed as “gadfly” on her death certificate, was born in 1884, the only daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Lee, who died two days after her birth. In addition to evoking her firecracker spirit, the novel explores young Alice’s quest for her father’s affection and approval. She feels he slights her in favor of her younger half-siblings since she reminds him too much of her beautiful, gray-eyed mother (her impression isn’t wrong). Thornton takes up Alice’s life starting in 1901, as her father takes up the mantle of ...
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A Women's History Month gallery: 10 new and upcoming novels about historical women's lives

In celebration of Women's History Month, and the focus on fiction from small and independent publishers on this blog during March, here are 10 recent and upcoming novels about women from history: biographical novels, as they're often called. Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood screen star and underrated scientist. Sourcebooks, March 2019. [ see on Goodreads ] Berthe Morisot, who follows her dreams of becoming an artist in 19th-century Paris. Regal House, March 2019. [ see on Goodreads ] Harriet Tubman, the renowned American abolitionist and "conductor" along the Underground Railroad.  Arcade, May 2019. [ see on Goodreads ] Sofonisba Anguissola, the accomplished Renaissance-era painter.  Bagwyn Books, January 2019. [ see on Goodreads ] Elizabeth Stuart, known as the "Winter Queen" of Bohemia, daughter of James I of England and ancestress to today's British royal family. ECW Press, June 2019. [ see on Goodreads ] Makeda, the legendary Queen of Sheba. Blank Slate, April...
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Interview with Gina Marie Guadagnino about her debut novel, The Parting Glass, set in 1830s NYC

Gina Marie Guadagnino's debut novel, The Parting Glass , grabbed my attention immediately. After downloading the e-galley, I'd intended to skim the first few pages to get a sense of the plotline before picking it up again later, but the voice and storyline were so intriguing that I found myself reading it straight through immediately. Set in 1830s New York City, it's narrated by Mary Ballard, a lady's maid with several secrets.  She's an Irish Catholic immigrant whose real name is Maire O’Farren, and her twin brother, Seanin, works as a groom on the same property. Maire reluctantly conceals Seanin's clandestine affair with her upper-class mistress, the beautiful Charlotte Walden, all the while wishing that she herself was the object of Charlotte's desire. During her time off, Maire embarks on her own affair with a prostitute she meets in an Irish tavern. The fast-moving story richly evokes the little-explored world of the Irish working class in early New Yor...
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Radio Underground by Alison Littman, a suspenseful debut about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and its aftermath

Based on actual Cold War letters, Littman’s fast-moving debut is infused with a simmering tension reflecting its setting: Budapest, Hungary, on the brink of revolution in 1956, and nine years later, when the secret police patrol the streets and any hints of dissidence are crushed. In the earlier timeline, Eszter Turján, wife of a loyal communist and mother of a teenage daughter, operates an underground newspaper, Realitás , and sneaks out at night to work with other freedom fighters. “These kids, too young to know failure, didn’t understand their passion was no match for a government trained in killing hope,” she states plainly, and truthfully, about the student demonstrators demanding freedom. Even so, she’s determined to fan the flames of revolution to give the students a fighting chance, undertaking a drastic act involving Radio Free Europe that will shift history’s path. In alternating segments set in 1965, Dora Turján reads people’s mail as a censor for the communist government. E...
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