A compassionate family drama that attacks emotional and generational unrest with an optimistic thesis—life goes on.
Divergent Vietnamese-American sisters grapple with their upbringing, their present circumstances and their shortcomings.
Debut novelist Nguyen integrates many of the themes found in her immigration memoir (Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, 2007), while solidly demonstrating a flair for fictional composition. The book centers on quarrelsome siblings Van and Linny, who find themselves at emotional and cultural crossroads as the first generation of their family to be raised in America. Not surprisingly, their personal dilemmas begin at home. Van, a competent and empathetic immigration attorney, has been abruptly abandoned by her preening, self-possessed husband Miles. This brings all her doubts about herself rocketing to the surface: “No matter what she wore or how good she might feel about herself, the sight of a pulled-together tall woman could make Van feel like a short little stump.” Linny has embraced the American way, barely acknowledging her Vietnamese origins. She lives a carefree but rootless life in Chicago, organizing prepared dinners for suburban customers and sleeping with a married man whose feelings toward her are suspect. Adding to the sisters’ growing uncertainties is an unwelcome homecoming: Van and Linny are called back to Grand Rapids to help celebrate their father’s recent U.S. citizenship. The family’s ambitious patriarch is Dinh Luong, a widower and amateur inventor whose most useful invention, a “Luong Arm” designed to extend the reach of short people, sharpens his daughters’ sense of inadequacy. As the sisters help their father prepare for a reality show called “Tomorrow’s Great Inventor,” they find themselves learning significantly more about themselves, their heritage and the art of self-invention. Nguyen sometimes relies too heavily on a few underlying motifs, but her candid storytelling style more than makes up for this deficit.
A compassionate family drama that attacks emotional and generational unrest with an optimistic thesis—life goes on.Pub Date: July 27, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02081-2
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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