Snapshots of gay life from different eras and generations, brought to life by biting, timelessly funny narration.
Two gay friends correspond about their many facets of their lives in Brown’s historical novel.
It’s 1990, and Dr. Francis Martell has recently moved from London to San Diego to teach at the Institute of Shakespearean Textual Analysis. In letters to his best friend back home—Jeremy Groves, the musical director for the British National Opera—he describes his bemusement at Southern California’s suburban sprawl, its clement weather, and most importantly, its attractive men. One strong, young Cajun man, in particular, named Beauregard Proud’homme—himself newly arrived from New Orleans—has caught Francis’ attention. “Well, professor, you haven’t wasted any time,” Jeremy responds, before informing him of the goings-on in London: Against a backdrop of Thatcherism and the ongoing AIDS crisis, Jeremy’s interest has been piqued by his newest protégé, Jonathan Gordon, who’s written a semiautobiographical novel recounting his trajectory from young boy in the North of England to out gay man working in the arts. Francis initially claims that contemporary gay coming-of-age novels only deepen his cynicism, but eventually, the two friends read the novel, making jabs at its form but finding its content inevitably relevant to their own experiences as young—or perhaps even older—gay men. Brown’s clever structure allows him to explore such themes as Judaism and jealousy in the queer community through Jonathan’s more straightforward coming-of-age story as a Jewish gay man, while the epistolary framing provides an unusual but engrossing exercise in character and voice. Whether the main characters are discussing public sex, leather bars, or classical composers, Francis and Jeremy imbue each missive with increasingly pompous turns of phrase, but they reveal a tender connection beneath the witty barbs and pretension. A convoluted subplot, bubbling in the background, involves Beauregard and blackmail, and it eventually works to tie all the characters together in fittingly operatic fashion—but it’s never as thrilling as Francis’ lovable contempt: “Its literary merit will, of course, be zero,” he says of Jonathan’s story. “I eagerly await the first instalment.”
Snapshots of gay life from different eras and generations, brought to life by biting, timelessly funny narration.Pub Date: July 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781805411390
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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