A sometimes-hopeful, often heartbreaking look at the difficult and beautiful moments of parenting and marriage.
In this debut novel, a man looks back at his relationship with his wife and tries to figure out where it went wrong in hopes that there’s still time to make things right.
When Frank’s wife, Maggie, collapses in their home, she ends up in a medically induced coma with an unclear prognosis. The nurse on duty tells Frank to talk to her—it’s good for patients to hear their loved ones’ voices. The only problem? Frank hasn’t spoken to Maggie in six months. Although Maggie has pleaded with him to speak to her, Frank has been unable to say a single word. And now, as his time might be running out, Frank attempts to tell Maggie what happened—starting with recounting the story of their entire 40-year relationship. Frank recalls the good times (their charming meet-cute at a bar, their early dates, their travels) as well as the hard times (years of loss and infertility). And then the arrival of their daughter, Eleanor, which changed everything. The story is as much about Frank's and Maggie’s difficult individual relationships with Eleanor as she grows up and begins to pull away from them as it is about their relationship with each other. Although the story is largely told from Frank’s point of view as he talks directly to Maggie, the reader also sees Maggie’s journal entries, meant for Frank to read. Greaves writes their distinct voices expressively and assuredly, making both characters come alive. Their struggle to help their daughter as she flounders is both realistic and moving, and it’s almost impossible not to like Frank and Maggie as they do everything they can to save her.
A sometimes-hopeful, often heartbreaking look at the difficult and beautiful moments of parenting and marriage.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293384-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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