A wild first novel that amply confirms the promise of Puchner’s story collection, Music Through the Floor (2005).
Family love flickers capriciously throughout this fine domestic drama, which runs the gamut from hilarious to harrowing.
Developer Warren Ziller’s first big mistake was to uproot his family from their happy Wisconsin home and move them to a too-expensive house in a lush Los Angeles suburb. He’s been told he can make a killing in California real estate, so he rushes to build in the desert without knowing about a planned sludge dump—his second big mistake. In the summer of 1985, facing bankruptcy, he hasn’t sold a single property. His sweetly virtuous wife Camille makes educational videos; handsome oldest son Dustin surfs and leads a punk band; daughter Lyle is smart and misanthropic; 11-year-old Jonas is strange and lonely. All of them are oblivious to their impending doom as they perform “the slow, jokey, unrehearsed vaudeville of being a Ziller.” Vaudeville is right: There are many laugh-out-loud moments, among them a particularly hilarious scene in which Lyle, drunk on tequila, serves some outraged customers at an ice-cream parlor. More serious developments include Lyle gleefully losing her virginity to the Mexican gatekeeper on their estate and Dustin having bravado sex with the disturbed sister of his less seducible girlfriend. Everything changes at the midpoint, when a gas explosion destroys their home and Dustin is badly burned. Family solidarity reigns supreme during the Zillers’ two-month vigil at the hospital, but it’s a different story when, with painful irony, they find themselves living next to the sludge dump. Another crisis erupts when Jonas runs away, but even in these dark times, humor keeps bubbling up. The inventive author maintains a swirl of action while encouraging us to ponder some fundamentals. What holds a family together: memories, rituals, crises? And how do parents guard against favoring one child over another?
A wild first novel that amply confirms the promise of Puchner’s story collection, Music Through the Floor (2005).Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7432-7048-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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
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
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