Medoff’s fully realized novel beautifully explores the most important relationships we create: as parent, as sibling, as...
Medoff’s talent for characterization is evident in her latest novel, a richly layered tale about that complicated thing called family.
Eliot Gordon is Everywoman—a working mother of three, she has complicated relationships and just a few minutes to spare at the end of the day. She dotes on her girls, 4-year-old Hailey and her stepdaughters, 7-year-old Gail and teenager Charlotte. She adores Grant (though they’re not married and no one’s sure why). And she is an active member of the Gordon Girls, consisting of youngest sister, Maggie, the comically imperious middle sister, Sylvia, and their mother, a novelist who spent their childhood hunched over a typewriter. It’s a good life except for the occasional intrusion of the Sculptress, Eliot’s code name for Grant’s first wife, Beth, a self-absorbed painter (she specializes in vagina self-portraits) who barely has time for Gail and Charlotte and expects Grant to support her art. And then Finn Montgomery appears. One of those impossibly beautiful men, Finn was Eliot’s great love in college until he took a job in New York and never looked back. Now back in Atlanta (with a polished wife and daughter), Finn bumps into Eliot and all of her memories of heartbreak and devotion come rushing back. They begin a flirtation, secret calls and meetings (we see Eliot helplessly tumbling into almost adultery) and then Finn takes it further, confessing that Eliot is his true love. To Medoff’s credit, the plot takes a sharp turn away from what could have been a conventional storyline; instead, at the beach and on the phone with Finn, Eliot turns for a moment, and when she turns back, both Hailey and Gail are drowning in the stormy Atlantic. Whom she chooses to save, and the consequences of her flirtation devastate everything she has. Heavy with guilt, Eliot tries to rebuild love.
Medoff’s fully realized novel beautifully explores the most important relationships we create: as parent, as sibling, as spouse.Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-446-58462-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: 5 Spot/Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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