Book Description
Married for twenty years to Edward Berry, Lyddie is used to the trials of being a whaler's wife in the Cape Cod village of Satucket, Massachusetts—running their house herself during her husband's long absences at sea, living with the daily uncertainty that Edward will simply not return. And when her worst fear is realized, she finds herself doubly cursed. She is overwhelmed by grief, and her property and rights are now legally in the hands of her nearest male relative: her daughter's overbearing husband, whom Lyddie cannot abide. Lyddie decides to challenge both law and custom for control of her destiny, but she soon discovers the price of her bold "war" for personal freedom to be heartbreakingly dear.
Includes the fascinating "story behind the story" of The Widow's War, a map of colonial Brewster, and a driving tour of the village of Satucket.
Customer Reviews:
The Widow's War.......2007-09-23
I totally enjoyed this book. I can't wait for her next book which I have pre-ordered.... Can't wait !!!!
Wonderful story.......2007-09-20
An excellent novel of historical fiction. Characters are well drawn and believable, and the story is gripping. Love that it's set on Cape Cod in Brewster, MA, where my family and I vacation every summer.
Great Book.......2007-07-30
This is a great book. Well written and holds your attention. I couldn't wait to finish it. You can tell the author did her homework. The facts about that period of time are amazing. Any independent woman would love this book! Enjoy!
brilliant.......2007-06-06
Gripping and convincing, with living, breathing characters and some of the best dialogue I have ever read. A wonderful book group choice because there is so much to discuss.
Believable then & now.......2007-05-14
I enjoy historical fiction very much and this ranks with the best of them. Lyddie could be any woman, any era. She is strong, frank and forthright about her concerns and decisions. The issue of racial prejudice was handled with wonderful candor and honesty. The conclusion of the story made sense, without giving us a fairy tale ending. This would be a great discussion book.
Book Description
This haunting love story--the magnificent new historical novelby the author of the national bestseller The Fig Eater--makes unforgettablyreal the ravages of love and war.Spring 1915. On a sprawling country estate not far from London, a youngwoman mourns her husband, fallen on a distant battlefield. The eeriestillness in which she grieves is abruptly shattered as her home istransformed into a bustling military hospital. Recoiling from the chaos,unhinged by grief, the young widow finds unexpected refuge in a tenderyoung soldier whose face, concealed by bandages, she cannot see. Theiraffair takes a fateful turn when she confronts--and seizes upon--theopportunity to remake her lover in the image of her lost husband. THE CRIMSON PORTRAIT is a novel of glittering surfaces that belie darktruths. Its rich cast comes into focus as the novel peels back layers ofsuspense and intrigue to illuminate the abiding mysteries of affinity anddesire.
Customer Reviews:
Ponderous Prose, Predictable Plot.......2007-06-12
Very disappointing.
Beautiful young widow has her gorgeous estate requisitioned by the military. The servants have all gone off to help the war effort, and she
is helpless. Military doctors move in, she retreats to the third floor, doesn't want to know what is going on in the house, which has become a military hospital. Thats all that happens in the first 50 pages.
Yawn.
A novel about the wounded of World War I.......2007-05-30
At some point in our lives, all of us have found fault with our own faces. Maybe it was the passing anxiety of youthful acne, freckles, oddly paired dimples, or stick-out ears. Perhaps it's the lifelong irritation of inherited imperfections, like a crooked nose, puffy eyelids, receding chin, sagging jowls, or turkey neck.
Yet, as dissatisfying as we sometimes find ourselves when looking in the mirror, I can wager a week's worth of coffee breaks that every last one of us would passionately miss our flawed "ordinary" faces if suddenly they weren't there anymore.
In THE CRIMSON PORTRAIT, author Jody Shields delves into medical history from the Great War (1914-1918) to build her remarkable, often arrestingly beautiful romantic novel around the traumatic post-combat lives of British soldiers whose faces were horribly disfigured by explosion wounds.
Amid the emotional, spiritual and physical pain endured by these sequestered patients (even their families were barred from seeing them), we meet an exceptional community of medical and physical caregivers. Thrown together in unexpected assignments at a commandeered English country house-turned-hospital, they muddle through their own fears, uncertainties, relationships and obsessions, along with the estate's owner --- the recent widow of yet another war casualty --- who is still suffering the initial throes of grief and denial.
Shields unravels their intersecting stories with a powerful delicacy one might never expect to find within such a potentially grotesque theme. She does it so well, in fact, that it is difficult to tell who the primary players really are.
There is the seemingly tireless surgeon who devotes his entire short-lived retirement to repairing soldiers' faces; the dentist-turned-bone sculptor, whose eastern European past remains a mystery; the deposed "chatelaine" tortured by fleeting glimpses of her dead young husband; the pragmatic artist whose skill at drawing surgical procedures competes with her anguished affection for two lovers; the teenaged draft dodger who yearns to be a surgeon; and finally, the "model" patient whose poetic good looks were blasted away forever in a trench across the English Channel. Perhaps the realization that they are all superbly crafted composite characters is what adds so much to the strength of this story, which transcends mere fiction by a quantum leap.
While war has often served to accelerate the development of surgical "miracles" that have become medical standbys in peacetime, no other injuries have ever posed challenges as technically difficult or as heart-rending as those affecting the human face.
We may be brought up on the truism that appearance is only superficial and that the "real person" within is most important, but as recovering soldiers sketched in THE CRIMSON PORTRAIT learn, nothing will ostracize a human being faster than the sight of his or her destroyed face. Except for a brief glimpse or two of the appalled "normal" residents in a nearby rural village, however, Shields leaves that part of her story prophetically untold.
Read this book and you may well forget you are reading fiction; it is brilliant, poignant, eloquent and humbling, in all the best ways fine literature can be.
--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch
Crimson Portrait is so-so... no Picasso.......2007-05-21
I bought this book because it was highly recommended. I thought it was mediocre.
Evocative Tale.......2007-03-17
This novel brings the WWI setting to life with the characters seen through the prism of another character, who is also struggling with the rapid and unwelcome changes that the war, and especially the military hospital bring to their lives. This may be something like what is sometimes called a psychological novel, but it's quite readable, and I enjoyed it.
Sadly Disappointing!.......2007-01-15
The premise of this book sounded great. Then I read it. For me it read at a snails pace. I thought the story was supposed to be about Catherine, based on the book jacket. Instead it was about Dr. McCleary, the surgeon, or so it seemed to me. Thank goodness I liked his character. I didn't care for any of the others. The author never really got into their heads, all except McCleary. The book dragged for me and the only reason I read daily was just to finish it so I could move on to another book. I had no interest in the ending of Portrait. Speaking of which, it was confusing. I was left with many questions. Why did Anna not like Catherine? Why did Anna keep rejecting Dr. Kazanjian when she followed him because she liked him? Did McCleary die? Did Catherine end up with Julian? Did he know about his mask? All in all, I would not recommend this book to anyone. Also, I got very bored with her over- usage of the word "crimson." I wish she'd try using red for a change.
Book Description
Allan Gurganus's
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and readers alike fell in love with the voice of ninety-nine-year-old Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heoines in American literature.
Lucy married at the turn of the last century, when she was fifteen and her husband was fifty. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood. Her story encompasses everything from the tragic death of a Confederate boy soldier to the feisty narrator's daily battles in the Home--complete with visits from a mohawk-coiffed candy-striper.
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All is proof that brilliant, emotional storytelling remains at the heart of great fiction.
Customer Reviews:
A Monumental Event for The Ultimate Survival........2005-09-22
This is the basis for the movie of the same name, an overwhelming preformance in words. Yes, it is comic because the old woman is in a nursing home ready to celebrate her birthday and anniversary of being the oldest Confederate widow. Actually, she'd been a young girl (age 15) when she foolishly married the fifty year old Confederate veteran, who was cruel to her.
This long book (five in all, entitled 'Nobody's Perfect,' ' Time Does That,' 'Give Strength, Lord,' ' These Things Happen,' and 'A Treaty with the World.' It is of monumental length for a first novel. It won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
It is a work of originality about the virtues of Southerners and has a great moral force. It tells the story of the War Between the States from a woman's point of view and the savage memories she shares of her hard life with a half-crazy Confederate Vet. Lucy Marsden gives an account of her life before, during, and after the Civil War. It is an incredible story of her husband, nine children, parents, mother-in-law, and friends along with her nursing home existence.
War makes men crazy and they take it out on the women in their lives. He couldn't do that to his looney mother who had been burned in her antebellum home which the Union army had destroyed during the war. He chose young Lucy to be his bride because she was different from the other school girls who were flighty and smart enough to steer clear of him. Lucy didn't know what she was getting into, and her mother did not prepare her for the marriage night when she was manhandled and abused by a mean man. She endured many sorrows because of him and yet the oldest widow was 'feisty' as "her outspoken opinions crackle with dark humor."
Lucy maintained a relationship with her mother-in-law's slave, Castalia, who'd looked after the old woman and stayed on to help Lucy as a freed black, like in 'Gone With The Wind.' She symbolized the failure of Reconstruction, meant to show the blacks how to be independent and forge a new life. Castalia had made the Marsden family her family.
Lucy grew into a strong woman despite her weak parents. Her memories of hardship and poverty after the war will remind you of your own hardships (we all have them at one time or another). It was made into the moving movie, and I could emphathize with her as I'd also married an older man and endured some of the same sexual frustration and abuse she did. Maybe that's why old men choose innocent virgins, to lord over. I cried through most of that movie which I watched on DVD recently.
"What the American public ... wants is a tragedy with a happy ending" was quoted in A BACKWARD GLANCE, W. Dean Howells to Edith Wharton. That's what they get in this story as Lucy lived to tell it all -- her way. I looked somewhat like her in the portrait holding the Confederate flag made by a professional at the County Fair just last week.
Allan Gurganus went on to write WHITE PEOPLE and THE PRACTICAL HEART. He also had an Omnibus of short features in one book.
i saw the miniseries on tv first.......2005-09-09
ok, so i was flipping through the channels and my daughter started crying. as i rocked her to sleep,it wasnt the first time i have had to sit through some terrible thing cause i couldnt reach the remote and she was nodding off.I started to watch one of the parts of this miniseries...oh my god i watched a woman give birth and i thought oh, god that seemed real...she was terrified . that woman was lucy marsden. i searched for the rest of the mini series and even tried to see if any of the video stores near me had it to rent.then i turned to amazon, i bought the miniseries ...after watching it i was so in awe at how marriage at a young and innocent age was really portrayed , that i bought the book on amazon too...and it did'nt disappoint!i tell anyone who will listen about the movie and book! that was the best book i have read on a womans struggle with issues of marriage and childbearing since evergreen which i also highly reccomend.
Just tell the story and get it over with!.......2004-10-31
Ordinarily I love a novel I can settle down and read - something really engaging. This book was more frustrating than engaging. The choppy sentences and haphazard storyline were too much to bear past the 6th chapter. For those of you who loved it - I admire your stamina. I just couldn't slog through another page and it's RARE that I don't finish a book.
Too much, too little.......2004-10-20
This book was a big disappoint and maddening at times. I am not one to not finish a book, so I slugged through. Waste of my time. I hated Lucy. I thought she was a pathetic woman with a sad life. Her horrible grammar was excrutiating to read as well, and the author even wrote an entire (long, like all the others) chapter on it! If people from the south really speak like that then it's no wonder northerners stereotypically think southerns are stupid and ill-educated. The entire book jumps around timewise - one minute Lucy is a 90-some year old in the nursing home (and this part of the story, to me, has no interest and appears at random interludes), next she is a young bride, next the story jumps to the Captain and to a time when Lucy was yet to be born. Information is missing - she had 9 children. Only four are named in the book, little information is given as to how or why they are all dead and if Lucy has any grandchildren. While I did find many of the individual chapters/stories interesting, the author draws them out and unnecessarily makes them last 50 pages when they could have been adequately portrayed in 20-30. I could not wait until Lady burned as I thought that would bring me to the end of the chapter.
Zzzzzzzz.......2004-07-14
I bought this book in Bangkok and read it because it was in English. Otherwise I would have chucked it aside. Ditto to what other reviewers have said about the bogged-down prose style, plus several other serious flaws, including but not limited to:
characters that are developed at ponderous length and suddenly disappear, never to be heard from again; the incomprehensible pattern of events which the narrator chooses (giving us every random detail for about a 12-year period and then skipping over a whole lot of stuff that would have been nice to know); stomach-churning prissiness that attempts to pass as womanspeak ("I then scolded my prettiest girl for lisping so"), and a burning-of-the-plantation scene that is laughably stupid as well as flat-out physiologically impossible. Not for the literate.
Amazon.com
The bloody ironies of World War II have inspired several fine mysteries, including J. Robert Janes's books about a German and French pair of detectives (Mannequin, Salamander) and Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy. Now the noted Czech author and revolutionary Pavel Kohout adds his unique voice to this very select group.
Her placid beauty (he could describe it no other way) was even more vivid in the near-darkness; her eternally sleepy voice moved him, though she was merely explaining that she had not been waiting long; no, she had just come outside, because it occurred to her they'd have trouble finding the house. He opened the rear right door for her and then got in on the other side. What sort of rare perfume was she wearing, he almost asked, before he realized that it was the smell of soap.
That's Kohout (through translator Neil Bermel, who also did Kohout's previous novel, I Am Snowing) describing an encounter between a young and relatively idealistic Czech detective and a woman who might provide a clue to who in 1945 Occupied Prague is murdering and mutilating the widows of war heroes.
Like Janes, Kohout makes his two cops an intriguing set: the young Czech, Morava, is partnered with a Gestapo officer, Buback, who turns out to have Czech origins and a secret agenda. While ostensibly keeping an eye on the Prague police for his superiors, Buback is also helping his Czech comrades prepare for the day when Germany will be defeated. That's a lot of history and social significance for a mystery novel, but Kohout has the heart and muscle to hold it all together. --Dick Adler
Book Description
In the downward spiral of the Third Reich's final days, a sadistic serial killer is stalking the streets of Prague. The unlikely pair of Jan Morava, a rookie Czech police detective, and Erwin Buback, a Gestapo agent questioning his own loyalty to the Nazi's, set out to stop the murderer. Weaving a delicate tale of human struggle underneath the surface of a thrilling murder story, Kohout has created a memorable work of fiction
Customer Reviews:
Disappointing yet Instructive.......2007-04-26
The literary and psychological possibilities generated by a detective story set in the last three months of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the rump state created by the Third Reich after the two-stage dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939) are promising. But this novel does not fulfill that promise. The major problems of the work are the clichéd nature of some of its characters and the implausibility of much of their dialogue, in which a sort of thinking-out-loud auto-didacticism occurs (in too many conversations characters review their lives and their relationships, including those of self to nation and culture, in a way that does not reflect realistic dialogue, although the subject matter of the dialogues and interior monologues is rooted in the real). The translation by Neil Bermel is solid and should not be held responsible for any shortcomings of style and expression found in the book - those are, as the saying goes, on Kohout's plate. It is clear from reading other works of Kohout (e.g., "The Hangwoman") that he does have superior talents as a narrator and stylist, but they are not on display in "The Widow Killer". If , however, you are partial to thrillers and "police procedurals", then you should go ahead and read the book, but don't expect either the characterizations or the accompanying philosophizing to rise above the conventional.
The story line is that of an investigation of a depraved serial killer who mutilates women in ritual fashion and who is accelerating the pace of his crimes. As the story progresses the investigation merges with the political and military events of the fall of the Protectorate. From a psychoanalytic point of view we readers learn rather soon that "his mama made him do it" - i.e., the murderer is driven by an abject condition of total emotional dependency on the "approval" of his dead (and formerly domineering) mother. His conversations with himself are well rendered, capturing the closed and agitated mental world in which he dwells. As the fall of the Protectorate nears he transfers his brutal energies to new targets and in his own mind he becomes an avenging angel against any and all Germans he encounters, and he begins to re-imagine himself as a national savior, a "new man" and a leader with a special mission. Whatever its object, he remains proud of his butchery. The equation of the killer with unregenerate Nazis, with Hitler himself, and with the most brutal enforcers of the Communist regime to come are evident. This is the killer's allegorical role.
Three policemen are especially important to the unraveling of the crimes and the pursuit of the madman. And, like the killer, each of them becomes a rather obvious allegorical or symbolic agent of recent political life and its messy morality. Superintendent Beran, of whom we learn nothing personal, is a fair-minded civil servant and highly professional policeman who also emerges as a mid-level leader in the movement to restore democracy to his country - he represents the virtues of the Czechoslovakian First Republic. His assistant, Jan Morava, is a young and somewhat naïve "country-boy" who comes to the capital city and adapts rapidly to a new way of life and who shows an instinctive investigator's abilities. His love-affair with Jitka is a side-story introduced in order to show us his admirable qualities (rooted in the traditions of his rural childhood) and to provide the killer with another heartbreakingly innocent victim. By the end of the book Morava is transformed into the typical good man of the postwar era who makes some very bad choices and lives to regret them. The third policeman is a German Gestapo man, Buback; he is a "half-Czech" who conceals his roots. His background and responsibilities are those of a conventional criminal-police investigator (and, as emphasized, not that of a "political" or "secret police" operative, despite his position in the Gestapo). He stands for the potentially "good German" who comes to his senses during the death spasms of the Third Reich. While Buback and his German lover (a promiscuous dancer and professional mistress who is self-deceiving but always alluring) confess their human failings to each other and attempt to redeem themselves by being of service to the Czechs, Morava goes through a parallel set of ruminations in which he tries to curb his antipathy toward Germans by recognizing their common humanity with his own people. These deliberations strike me as too transparent and somewhat awkward, and they represent, I believe, Kohout's retrospective contemplation of his own feelings at the time of the story (1945). They are psychologically plausible and instructive, but should have been rendered more indirectly and less clumsily.
As for the "thriller" elements of the story, it becomes obvious by the middle of the book that both Morava and Buback (and his girlfriend Grete, who is the tainted counterpart of Jitka) will not only solve the case but will also be on a personal collision course with the murderer, placed by the author on converging pathways that will lead inevitably to a gruesome conclusion. The reader will be surprised by the identities of the killer's last sacrificial lamb and the character who renders the ultimate justice.
Interesting details of the historical situation are introduced in the final pages of the book -- the role of General Vlasov's doomed renegade army in evicting the Germans from Prague; the city's rather casual and chaotic liberation; and the arrival of a fiery and decisive Communist leader named Svoboda who has definite plans for the constitution and political complexion of the future Czechoslovakian state (this is not Ludvik Svoboda, the military hero who later became President; but it is a name chosen for its symbolism, a name directly translatable as "freedom"). Svoboda's energy, persuasive talents, apparent rectitude, and previous suffering on behalf of his cause convince Morava to commit himself to the emerging Communist regime, believing it is the path to a just society. As the book's final sentence states, this decision is the biggest mistake of his life. This judgment comes at the end of a sentimental message from Morava to the deceased Jitka (a message that mingles a love-note with simple-minded patriotic and political musings akin to slogans). The deflating last sentence of the book appears to be a sort of oblique self-evaluation by the author, since Morava's sudden and eager commitment to the Communist cause reflects the early "ideological" career of Kohout himself. We might read it as a displaced acknowledgment of guilt, that is, as the author's confession of and penance for the follies of his own youth, follies always implicit in the assumption of harsh and "pure" beliefs (and their punishing effects on the lives of others), which he too came to regret.
More than a mystery: Prague's dark dangers.......2005-10-09
Not only for its first sentence, cited on Amazon, but for its last, which raises hopes of a sequel about the rise of Communism in the Czech lands already begun before the final silencing of the Nazis in Prague--this novel deserves an audience in the West. It did take me a long time to finish, and while I cannot comment on whether the fact of translation (which I always suspect when I slowly read applicable novels in English) or the details amassed by Kohout were the cause, the density of atmosphere as Prague struggles to free itself from its captivity as the capital of the Reich's Protectorate makes for a fittingly somber and moving fictional thriller, combined with a thoughtful meditation, thanks especially to Gestapo functionary Buback and his love Grete, on how decent people can redeem themselves--and perhaps others--from barbarity for which they have been too long its too complacently silent perpetrators.
This added depth to an already intricate whodunit enriches the plot. It's not perfect. A map should have been added for the benefit of readers not familiar with Prague's byways. Even as a repeat visitor there, I wished for some guidance, as much of the action in the later chapters depends upon the barricades and escapes among its city streets and districts, as the German and native elements make their assaults and retreats.
The action itself, although it starts finally to intensify after the news of Hitler's suicide begins to encourage and discourage the novel's various characters, might have moved along far quicker; although the novel never bogged down, it did wander off on detours that detracted from the intensity of its central clash between liberators and oppressors. I do not read mysteries or thrillers normally, so I may be not the best critic of such genre conventions regarding pacing. The murders, thinking about it in retrospect, uneasily shift from those of psycho-sexual delusion to those excused on behalf of a vengeful populace, and although this transfer is less than smoothly accomplished, it does perhaps represent more accurately the sudden jerks of the crazed mind rather than the controlling author.
As I stated earlier, I'd love to read more about some of the key figures as the Czech democrats succumbed to the Communists, and certainly Kohout's own age and experience would make him an excellently placed observer and chronicler. In the meantime, this novel may not describe much of the beloved postcard Prague, but conjures up the sinister shadows that, when I walked along Bartolemeska street, I could still enter, left by decades of its prominence as the dark facades where the police and the jail loomed even as the flags changed.
Historical, gripping, spine-chilling.......2001-11-26
I bought this book to get away from the normal stuff that I read. Good choice, as it is both historical gives one a glimpse of the days of German-occupied city of Prague during the twilight of World War II. The story opens with the gruesome murder of Baroness of Pomerania, the widow of a German Wehrmacht general, by a serial killer. The coroner's report determines that the victim did not resist and was not raped. Mysteriously, her heart was removed and vanished with the killer.
The mismatched pair of Jan Morava, a Czech detective, and Erwin Buback, a Gestapo agent who is questioning his loyalty to the Nazis, set out to track down the killer before he can strike again. But as Morava and Buback follow the killer's bloody trail through Prague, it becomes clear that he is not a political radical or a wartime dissident but a tormented psychopath.
In the final days of the Third Reich, as the war proceeds to its gruesome end, the narrative sinuously shifts perspectives, taking us deep into the emotional maelstrom of each of the characters: young Morava, struggling to find love and approval in a war-torn city; the disillusioned Buback, haunted by the ghosts of his beloved wife and daughter; and the tormented killer, sent on a bloody rampage to please "her whom he obeys."
As the story comes to the end, it grips you yearning the know what will happen next. A gripping tale of human struggle under a thrilling murder, Pavel Kohout creation of a memorable work of fiction, as one of the last important novels from one the war's direct eyewitnesses.
Highly recommeded, text refers to hardcover edition.
A very good read, with excitement and intelligence.......2001-08-31
Kohout's novel works on two levels. First, it's an excellent, gripping, historical murder mystery. The characters are well-rounded and interesting, the killer mysterious and frigtening, and the plot taught and fast-moving. Second, it's a thoughtful examination of issues of loyalty and personal morality, revolving primarily around the efforts of a Gestapo officer and a local, partisan Czech police detective to cooperate in capturing a sociopath while balancing their respective commitments to their own consciences, and their loyalties to their own countries, as the Reich falls around them.
A very good read.
One Step Beyond Chaos.......2001-07-28
It would be hard for an Author to have more sterling credentials than Mr. Pavel Kohout. He was born in Prague in 1928, he was a leader in, "The Prague Spring", in 1968, and finally with Vaclav Havel he helped create the freedom document, "Charta 77", in 1977. As his book is set in Prague it resonates with the level of detail that only a native could know and share. I used the idea of beyond chaos as a reference to the time he chose to set his tale. I cannot imagine a more frenzied period than the closing months of a war when competing, "Allies", are intent on taking over your city. Mr. Kohout added to this frenetic environment a particularly brutal serial killer with multiple demons that drive him.
There is yet a third layer of conflict on an individual level as several of the characters are trying to resolve their actions during the war with their respective nationalities. Prague was unique in that it was a protectorate, so while occupied it still maintained an indigenous Police Force however closely monitored by the Nazi Invaders. These opposing forces and their members must work in concert to solve a crime just as the relationships and power structures that have governed their lives for 6 years are crumbling by the day, and eventually from moment to moment.
For me the book worked very well for much of the beginning and the end. In fact these two portions make up the majority of the book. There were some decisions made about who would participate in the capture of the killer, and I found them hard to take as credible, and very predictable in their outcome. Taken as a whole the work is well above most contributions to the genre, and additionally brings the first hand life experiences of the Author.
Another aspect that deserves mention is one female player he singles out that seems to embody so much of what the occupying Germans fear they will face as a result of how Germany will be perceived after the war. This woman can be exasperating, as she seems to be enigmatic at best, and to speak in riddles at worst. However as the tale unwinds she becomes a reflection of the more complicated of the wars conundrums.
This is a special book that could stand alone simply on the quality it is imbued with. When the Author is a man who has been in the midst of his Country's History, his words and the experiences he relates raise the work to another level of credibility. It may indeed be fiction, but if you were to walk the streets with this book in hand, you would probably be left with a feeling that it would serve as a guide for your trip through Prague.
A very well done work definitely deserving of your time.
Average customer rating:
- Good Grief!!
- Rivoting
- A good read
- This was a good book
- I could not believe how bad this book was!
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The Chase: A Novel
Brenda Joyce
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
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ASIN: 0312284497 |
Amazon.com
Great destinies are never for the faint-hearted in Brenda Joyce's romantic thrillers, and never has that been more true than in The Chase, the tale of a 50-year-old horror and its shocking legacy for an innocent woman. Busy, beautiful Claire Hayden, wife of a prominent San Francisco attorney, heiress to a tidy fortune, and fundraiser for numerous pet causes, watches her superficially secure life unravel during her husband's 40th-birthday party. Not only does Claire decide in the midst of festivities that she wants a divorce, but she discovers her preoccupied spouse gruesomely murdered, her assets evaporated, and a handsome stranger igniting her repressed sexual passion.
Faced with dark, new challenges, Claire toughens up in the gales of a multigenerational mystery, including the nightmarish possibility that her own father has been an assassin since the 1940s. Crucial to the story is Claire's ticklish crime-solving partnership with sexy Nazi-hunter Ian Marshall; unfortunately, their love-hate, bicker-flirt relationship quickly becomes monotonous. Far better is the tragic, evocative subplot concerning the marriage of a poor, orthodox Jew and a Christian aristocrat in pre-World War II Britain. In The Chase, the past always lurks, like a killer biding his time, behind the enigmas of one's life. --Tom Keogh
Book Description
Claire Hayden has no idea that her world is about to be shattered.At the conclusion of her husband'' 40th birthday party, he is found murdered, his throat cut with a weapon that hasn't been used since World War II.He has no enemies.He has committed no crimes. He has no shady past.Claire's search for information leads her to the mysterious Ian Marshall, an acquaintance of her husband who seems to know something.Someone has been killing this way for decade.Someone whose crimes go back to World War II.Someone who will do anything to make sure no one finds out.As Claire and Ian team up to track down the killer, Ian makes a shocking revelation: the killer may be close-and moving closer-to Claire.Full of twists and turns, The Chase is a fast-paced thriller with Brenda Joyce's trademark plotting, sensuality, and characterization.AUTHORBIO: Brenda Joyce is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 22 novels.She divides her time between New York City and Colorado.
Customer Reviews:
Good Grief!!.......2004-11-15
Is Claire supposed to be likeable,clever and witty? I found her to be petulant, manipulative and intrusive. Why would a man who works for the FBI agree to engage her as a 'partner'; one attached with not just white glue, but Krazy Glue!
I especially winced at the part where Ian and Claire were being pursued by a man in a black BMW,when he caught up with them and got out of the car, it turned into a Mercedes! OOPS! Where was the editor on that one?? Or was there a ferry-god-mother on the loose?? o-well, what the heck, they are both German made vehicles.
The story line gains a smidgen of strength when BJ introduces Rachel and tells the story within the story. However; the depiction of 'true love' occuring within the amount of contact that Eddy and Rachel had was less believable than a Hollywood movie romance. I think they had one 'official' date before they married; and that was spent rolling in the hay and Rachel offering up her virginity to a virtual stranger!
The morning after they married and broke into Elgin's slum apartment,Rachel was appalled at a 'look' she had never before seen on Eddy's face. If the marriage had lasted, I am afraid Rachel would have been in for a lot of little surprises. But thank goodness it is all fiction; which leaves me wondering why BJ couldn't have done a more believable job since the only limitation to the story was her imagination.
This was my first Brenda Joyce book and my last....
Rivoting.......2004-09-29
This is the first book I have read by this author and absolutely loved it. I love the depth of the storyline plus the romance I like mixed in with the mysteries I read. I will definitely be looking for more books to read by this author. I am, however puzzled on which "series" I should read since I liked this one. I don't want to go into a series with different characters until I finish these if it is a series. I went to the website but haven't received an answer.
A good read.......2004-07-03
I liked this one. It reminded me alittle of Suzanne Brockmann's way of telling a story in a story.
Claire finds her husband dead on his birthday. She is at the point of asking for a divorce. But with his death she finds herself plunged into a mystery, not only for today but a mystery connected to a spy during WWII.
Ian Marshall is a Nazi Hunter that her husband contacted before he was killed. He has his own reasons for hunting the spy.
We learn the whole story, through flashbacks that touch our hearts. A wonderful love story that didn't have a proper end.
Togather, through twists and turns we are kept on edge looking for our spy. This book truely has a different and wonderful ending. I greatly enjoyed the adventure and romance.
This was a good book.......2003-12-27
This was the first book that I've read by Brenda Joyce and I really liked it. I liked how she switched between past and present and told you the history of the other charecters. This book kept me in suspense on who killed all those people and at the end I was totally suprised about what happened. I would definitly read a book by her again.
I could not believe how bad this book was!.......2003-08-09
This is the first Brenda Joyce book that I have read, and if this typical of her writing style it will also be the last. When I read the backcover description of the story it sounded like something I would really enjoy - I could not have been more mistaken. The plot had promise, but the writing was awful. The book was full of mistakes and contradictions. The "witty banter" between Claire and Ian was supposed to make Claire seem charming (I think), but instead made her seem moronic. The fact that all Claire had to do to distract Ian from his intended plan was flash him a huge smile made him seem like a complete pushover. What a waste of time!
Book Description
Widowed years before by her husband Warrens early death in an icy morning car crash, Agnes Scofield has grown into a woman of fierce and unconquerable independence. It is the 1940s in Washburn, Ohio, and the war has finally ended. Agness children are returning homefrom Washington, D.C., from soldiering abroadand bringing an end to Agness solitude in the great old family house. And to Agnes this means that she must accustom herself once more to her childrens presence, to their notions of what kind of mother she has been for all these years. Hanging over the day-to-day events of life at Scofields are Agness constant memories of Warren, her feelings of devotion and resentment, and her longtime suspicion that his untimely departure may not have been an accident. In this meditative novel of love and trust, lust and deception, Dew illuminates the small events that make up a lifetime. She is a marvel of a writer, and her spare and precise prose builds a world of startlingly lush and vivid detail.
Customer Reviews:
"I agree with "redsue: - a TOTAL DUD!!!.......2007-04-12
I am about 10 pages from finishing this book and I thought the whole way through that I should just put it down. I kept waiting for the storyline to make itself known, for the dialogue to have some relevance and human emotion and most of all, for the characters, ANY of them, to become believable! I wish all the professional reviews of this book were true, I was looking forward to a great little read, but this is one book that I'm tossing in the give-away bin tonight (I don't actually have a give-away bin, but I'll make one for this book) when I finally turn the last page and put this "novel" out of it's misery. The storyline is absolutely incoherent, the narrator jumps from year to year, back and forth with no connection or elegant seque, almost like a stream of consciousness of a fairly boring and mundane life. And familial relationships are only cursorily identified, further complicated by the fact two of the minor characters have virtually the same name. But the problem is that you don't even care if you get the characters straight in your own mind because all of the characters are minor, all of them rather pathetic and unengaging. I had to keep reminding myself when most of the story was supposed to have taken place, the period markers and nuances were non-existent, the authors' use of language and characterization are annoyingly contemporary. Agnes is a sad, confused woman who I doubt will get it together in the last pages of the book, I'm not sure I would even care if she did.
This is the first review I've written here. I love books, I love to read, I have wept inconsolably over great books, I never give books away even after I've ready them (I might want to read them again!!), I keep them all, as my overflowing bookshelves can attest. But this book is such drivel that I can't believe anyone actually published it, that this is only one of a trilogy??? Ugh. If I could rate with a negative star, I would. Don't believe the reviews - this is a waste of money, paper and ink.
Seemed a little off.......2007-02-22
This book made me feel good, often. Dew really hits the nail on the head in her descriptions of the way Agnes feels, as a wife, a lover and a mother. I could really relate. But after that, I found the story rather bland. And I had trouble keeping track of the cast of characters by name, including her two older sons. But what really blew me away, and I found so incredible, was that Agnes watches her daughter marry her own former lover. That repulsed me; I had trouble getting by that part of the story. In all, I found it an okay read if you have to pass some time, but I would not recommend it.
THE TRUTH IS 'IT'S BORING'!.......2007-01-16
I found myself nodding off and wondering "when does this story start". Several pages to just describe a dog?
And very little communication written with the family members. (who all went to war but little was said about their time there?). Just Agnes and her boring thinking about Warren and the Scofield's and Uncle Leo (who??) who live near each other. (again little or no comnunication). Dew can't even make Will sound interesting! This book is a "DUD". Compare it to Lynn Austin's "A Woman's Place" which takes place in the 1940's and you'll find a book you can't put down, with interaction between people and descriptive places and events.
This is the first and last Robb Forman Dew's book I'll read!!
Deeper than I first thought.......2006-06-13
As I got to the end, I realized what the whole book was about, and hope to use this information in my own life. I highly recommend this book, and The Evidence Against Her.
A Continuation of The Evidence Against Her, Answering Questions Left Over.......2006-04-27
Sometimes memories are as vivid as life in real-time. This is true for Agnes Scofield, widow of Warren Scofield and mother of adult children.
Just where she stands these days is unclear but she knows she doesn't want to be pressured into marrying her lover, Will. She isn't even all that embarrassed about carrying on with him in secret.
In an old house with an adopted dog she has renamed Pup, Agnes is surrounded by people who are worried about her. Secrets unfold. Old secrets that have hidden in the hearts of family members for too long. Agnes must eventually decide whether or not to forgive and how to find the peace she is seeking.
The Truth of the Matter is a continuation of the story this author started in the novel, The Evidence Against Her. Robb Forman Dew answers any questions her fans may have regarding the characters with which she began. The Truth of the Matter is a solid effort that is worth reading.
Average customer rating:
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The Black Widow: The Coldest War (Marvel Graphic Novel)
Gerry Conway
Manufacturer: Marvel Enterprises
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0871356430 |
Customer Reviews:
Do Not Buy This!!!.......2005-09-27
The only reason I can imagine Marvel Comics had for publishing this graphic novel is greed, because there is nothing redeeming in this over-priced ($10 cover price in 1990) book.
The art is horrible. George Freeman is the penciler... I'm guessing the penciler is responsible for drawing the pictures. Gads, is it awful. Mr Freeman's drawings are better than I could do, but he shouldn't be making a living at it. Example, the Black Widow, while obviously female, is not pretty or even red-haired. The fight scenes are either difficult to make out or amatuerish. Sometimes both. I suspect Freeman gets work because he churn out pages and pages of this poorly drawn crude.
In my opinion, comics as a media live and die by their art. This Black Widow graphic novel died.
As for the story. Some Russian rich people or gangsters or political types blackmail/coerce Black Widow into stealing a hi-tech item from S.H.I.E.L.D. The blackmail is a crime the Black Widow didn't commit. The additional bit of bait is the Widow's husband, the original Red Guardian, long thought dead.
This entire graphic novel screams "we did this on the cheap!!!":
- the art is terrible
- the story is weak and confusing.
- the editing was sloppy too. They actually misspelled "Red Guardian", which is a Marvel Trademark.
- And there's no introduction. Most graphic novels or trade paperbacks have an introduction by the artist, the writer, or one of their collegues in the industry. Said person says great things about the work, the artist, the writer, etc... Marvel either couldn't find someone to do the introduction or they didn't want to invest any time (or money) in finding someone to do it.
DO NOT BUY THIS!!! I'm going to feed it my sister's dogs.
Average customer rating:
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Marvel Comics Presents #70 : Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Shanna, Daredevil, & Black Widow (Marvel Comics)
Howard Mackie ,
Gerard Jones ,
Sandy Plunkett , and
Robert Capanella
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Howard, Robert
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ASIN: B000Q1IIWU |
Books:
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- Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions
- Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul
- Windows PowerShell in Action
- A Small White Scar
- Acres of Diamonds
- Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter)
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