<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A Saga of War and Family
Review: NECKLACE OF WARM SNOW In her debut novel, Necklace of Warm Snow, Brenda Hall offers a generous familial and historical saga spanning a half-century of modern time, from the French Resistance movement (1943) to personal closure for her heroine, Hilary, in 1992.
Hilary's childhood was scarred by the barrenness of her parents' relationship. Only when she is older and ready to embark on relationships with men does she realize to what extent her father Alistair's aloofness and secrecy have weighed on her own capacity to find the right partner and to define herself clearly as an individual.
The lives of father and daughter run parallel in this tale, only truly intersecting when Hilary is at last able to piece together the mystery of Alistair's wartime past and his more recent extramarital adventure.
The strife and dissent of the family echo the painful moments of a past in which Brenda Hall guides the reader through the trauma of committing unavoidable murder during the Resistance, the ignominious round-up of Parisian Jews in the Vélodrome d'Hiver in 1942, and the tragic loss of Alistair's first love, Lena (deported to a concentration camp).
Brenda Hall's themes are multiple; her story tells how past and present are irrevocably linked and how long-ago events can shape not only us but our children as well. She evokes the consequences of unsuccessful marriage and the refusal to face the evidence of failure for any number of reasons: pride, conformity, apathy, despair, self-delusion. She is outraged by passivity in the face of inadequate family ties, as she is by our capacity to forget the lessons of the past: "Did the young learn about these events in school? Did those who remembered feel remorse, guilt, and sorrow?"
Throughout the story, past and present, war and peacetime reverberate, while her characters, victims, all, of events beyond their control, struggle to make sense of their lives. Neither heroic nor wicked, like the villagers during the war ("But it wasn't clear-cut. People weren't simply heroes or villains."), Brenda Hall endows them with the very human desire to pursue happiness that enthralls us all.
Her subject is an ambitious one, her cast of characters numerous. Indeed, the author has bitten off quite a meaty morsel. To some, the narration may appear overloaded. She does, however, steer its complexity to a satisfying conclusion in which the past is laid to rest, if only for awhile. Both author and reader well know that if "the war to end all wars" is long past, other wars haunt us today, in other places, leaving their cruel, indelible marks on other lives, their poison in the veins of new generations ("nothing changes...people don't learn the lessons of history: each generation renews its hatreds with blood.").
Rating:
Summary: A Saga of War and Family
Review: NECKLACE OF WARM SNOW In her debut novel, Necklace of Warm Snow, Brenda Hall offers a generous familial and historical saga spanning a half-century of modern time, from the French Resistance movement (1943) to personal closure for her heroine, Hilary, in 1992.
Hilary's childhood was scarred by the barrenness of her parents' relationship. Only when she is older and ready to embark on relationships with men does she realize to what extent her father Alistair's aloofness and secrecy have weighed on her own capacity to find the right partner and to define herself clearly as an individual.
The lives of father and daughter run parallel in this tale, only truly intersecting when Hilary is at last able to piece together the mystery of Alistair's wartime past and his more recent extramarital adventure.
The strife and dissent of the family echo the painful moments of a past in which Brenda Hall guides the reader through the trauma of committing unavoidable murder during the Resistance, the ignominious round-up of Parisian Jews in the Vélodrome d'Hiver in 1942, and the tragic loss of Alistair's first love, Lena (deported to a concentration camp).
Brenda Hall's themes are multiple; her story tells how past and present are irrevocably linked and how long-ago events can shape not only us but our children as well. She evokes the consequences of unsuccessful marriage and the refusal to face the evidence of failure for any number of reasons: pride, conformity, apathy, despair, self-delusion. She is outraged by passivity in the face of inadequate family ties, as she is by our capacity to forget the lessons of the past: "Did the young learn about these events in school? Did those who remembered feel remorse, guilt, and sorrow?"
Throughout the story, past and present, war and peacetime reverberate, while her characters, victims, all, of events beyond their control, struggle to make sense of their lives. Neither heroic nor wicked, like the villagers during the war ("But it wasn't clear-cut. People weren't simply heroes or villains."), Brenda Hall endows them with the very human desire to pursue happiness that enthralls us all.
Her subject is an ambitious one, her cast of characters numerous. Indeed, the author has bitten off quite a meaty morsel. To some, the narration may appear overloaded. She does, however, steer its complexity to a satisfying conclusion in which the past is laid to rest, if only for awhile. Both author and reader well know that if "the war to end all wars" is long past, other wars haunt us today, in other places, leaving their cruel, indelible marks on other lives, their poison in the veins of new generations ("nothing changes...people don't learn the lessons of history: each generation renews its hatreds with blood.").
<< 1 >>
|
