Realistic, sharply descriptive, and movingly observant writing.
An American soldier returning from Vietnam struggles with flashbacks and the demands of reintegrating into civilian life in this novel by Hartney.
On a flight out of Vietnam in March 1970, Reid Holcombe finds himself surrounded by fellow U.S. Marines celebrating the ends of their final tours of duty. Reid just wants to forget what he’s seen and done in combat and return to his family’s South Carolina tobacco farm. Things have changed back home: His father has died; his sister, Angela, is running the farm; and his wife, Ellie, had an affair with local consultant Diana Welsch. Reid, while deployed, had an affair with a Vietnamese medic. Instead of trying to reconnect with his spouse, he chooses to live on the struggling farm with his sibling while wrestling with his inner demons. The novel also tells the story of Joe Terrell, a Black soldier who returned to rural South Carolina, where he faces constant racism. When Reid asks Joe and his father to work on the farm, their relationship highlights their differences as well as their shared struggles. Hartney’s prose is thoughtfully descriptive, cleverly contrasting rural stillness with soldiers’ psychological turmoil: “A thrush hopped from branch to branch before flitting away. The farm was peaceful, a lean-to shelter in an emotional rainsquall.” The author effectively captures the anger of men who return from war only to be treated as second-class citizens. Joe’s words are particularly biting: “I’m not wanting to be fighting again, but I can’t live less than a man….South ain’t changed. She’ still a whore.” Hartney skillfully exposes the tensions that exist between those transformed by violence, as when Ellie says of her husband: “I’m sure I still have feelings for him. Love, I think. I’m also sure I can’t live with him. We’re both too changed, too damaged.” Certain passages are slightly repetitive, particularly with respect to unpleasant odors. However, this doesn’t detract from this ambitious novel, which addresses issues of PTSD and racial injustice with believable characterization.
Realistic, sharply descriptive, and movingly observant writing.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1509234622
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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