Overview / 简介: |
Winner of the Batchelder Award--this tale of of exile, sacrifice, hope, and survival is a story of ultimate love.
Blaise Fortune, also known as Koumaïl, loves hearing the story of how he came to live with Gloria in the Republic of Georgia: Gloria was picking peaches in her father’s orchard when she heard a train derail. After running to the site of the accident, she found an injured woman who asked Gloria to take her baby. The woman, Gloria claims, was French, and the baby was Blaise.
When Blaise turns seven years old, the Soviet Union collapses and Gloria decides that she and Blaise must flee the political troubles and civil unrest in Georgia. The two make their way westward on foot, heading toward France, where Gloria says they will find safe haven. But what exactly is the truth about Blaise’s past?
Bits and pieces are revealed as he and Gloria endure a five-year journey across the Caucasus and Europe, weathering hardships and welcoming unforgettable encounters with other refugees searching for a better life. During this time Blaise grows from a boy into an adolescent; but only later, as a young man, can he finally attempt to untangle his identity.
Bondoux’s heartbreaking tale of exile, sacrifice, hope, and survival is a story of ultimate love.
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From Organization / 国外机构评价: |
| After the collapse of the Soviet Union, seven-year-old Koumaïl and his guardian, Gloria, flee violent unrest and begin an arduous journey across the Caucasus toward France. That’s where Koumaïl was born, according to Gloria, who describes how she found Koumaïl in the wreckage of a train accident that killed his French mother. Gloria became the boy’s devoted guardian, and Koumaïl recounts their inseparable bond as they risk everything, finding shelter in forests, camps, and gypsy settlements. Bondoux, author of the multi-award-winning The Killer’s Tears (2006), tells another unusual, wrenching story of a vulnerable child. Koumaïl’s first-person voice shifts uneasily between a young person’s naïveté and an adult’s acquired wisdom: “I’m in a rush to grow up. I sense that the world in which we live is hostile to children.” That may be a natural combination in an individual who has endured so much so young, though, and in potent details, Bondoux creates indelible scenes of resilient children who, like Koumaïl, find strength in painful memories: “To be less afraid of the darkness and the unknown, I call on my ghosts.” Grades 7-10. --Gillian Engberg |
Foreign Customer Review / 国外客户评价: |
| Koumail knows exactly who he is: Blaise Fortune, indisputable and abandoned-through-a-train-accident French boy. Even as the seven-year-old flees the collapsing Soviet Union with Gloria, his beloved mother figure, Koumail knows that there will always be a safe haven for the faux mother-son duo in France.
It turns out to be a journey fraught with hard work and starvation, doubt and heartbreak. Through it all, Koumail merely has to recite one sentence - just one - to make sure he still has the strength to continue. "My name is Blaise Fortune and I am a citizen of the French Republic." It's the pure and simple truth. Or is it?
Wow, A TIME OF MIRACLES is a little 200+ page novel that packs quite a punch. Translated from French, this story is told as an extended flashback laced with intricate details and told in flowing prose. Originally, the synopsis failed to impress me, and I started this book with a feeling of dread, often reminding myself of the fact that I could simply write a scathing review to vent my feelings afterward. Well, I apologize profusely to this book. To put it simply: I was blown away.
This is just a simple story of a boy and a woman, escaping oppression and searching for freedom. And yet it was also emotional and gripping all at once. Ms. Bondoux definitely succeeded in drawing out this reader's sympathy for the two characters.
And Koumail, oh Koumail - funny, sweet, and fiercely protective of Gloria. It isn't possible for someone to not like this little boy. He entertains with his antics, his blind faith, and the three true loves he meets on their short journey. Even while Koumail's begging in front of a random restaurant in the icy coldness, he's still alight with hope.
A TIME OF MIRACLES is a surprisingly moving historical novel. It is one of those books you close with a quiet sigh.
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