Kamlani’s ambitious debut packs an important dose of relevant history into a very human story.
Is it a curse or a blessing to live though the proverbial “interesting times?”
Upon meeting Mahatma Gandhi—a guest in his family’s home—for the first time at the age of 10, Shiv Advani tells the legendary Indian statesman that he wishes to be just like him when he gets older. Gandhi encourages him, but reminds him it will require both hard work and the relinquishment of all desire. Shiv believes, naively, he can follow the path set out for him, but the lures of personal contentment and satisfaction tempt him all the way through Kamlani’s examination of the tumultuous years before India’s independence from British rule. Sent to study law in London as an 18-year-old at Gandhi’s behest, Shiv has a goal of becoming proficient in British law and returning to India to advance the independence movement through non-violent means. Over his years of legal education, training, and early practice in England, Shiv becomes more aware of the costs of self-denial and of the nuances—sometimes cruel—of British culture. Shiv’s growing awareness of his own sexuality and his place within a culture which often treats him with disdain takes place against the backdrop of slow-moving political and cultural transformations in both Britain and India and the advancing threat of World War II. Inspired by her uncle’s experiences, Kamlani’s story of one man’s odyssey of discovery contains extensive historical context. Replete with lyrical imagery of rivers, the saga confronts issues of racism, class disparities, parenthood, and sexual acceptance. A tour de force moment of period-appropriate cultural dissection occurs when Shiv’s British lover attempts to provide a crash course in how to be “one of us.”
Kamlani’s ambitious debut packs an important dose of relevant history into a very human story.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798461
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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