A startling meditation on grief and family and betrayal and the stories we tell about ourselves.
Anna Hogeland, a 30-year-old pregnant writer who shares the author's name, chronicles the often unspoken fears and desires of the mothers and would-be mothers in her life.
When Anna’s sister, Margot, with whom she’s always had a fraught relationship, calls to tell her she’s had a miscarriage before Anna even knew she was pregnant, it sets off a series of conversations among sisters, close friends, and even strangers in Irvine, California; Anchorage, Alaska; and various points in between about the “closed grief” of pregnancy loss. Then, when things seem to take a turn for the worse in Anna’s own pregnancy, her newfound empathy is put to the test: Will she emerge strengthened by this experience or as a diminished version of her former self? An introspective, psychologically astute, and engaging debut, this novel delves into territory that is rarely explored in fiction: the raw and devastating costs and painful choices that women face when a new life ends before it can begin. For fans of Rachel Cusk’s Outline or Claire Vaye Watkins’ I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness, here is a heart-rending tale that blurs the line between fiction and reality. In tight, unassuming prose, Hogeland unravels a complex web of stories about other women’s lives, the stories they tell her about their own pregnancies and families, as Anna (the narrator) attempts to pinpoint which parts are true and which are false. At a critical moment we realize that the story she's telling and retelling about these other women is, in fact, the one she has been trying to avoid, the one that wasn’t ever supposed to end up in these pages: her own story. “This was never supposed to be part of this novel,” she writes.
A startling meditation on grief and family and betrayal and the stories we tell about ourselves.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-41813-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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