This pensive, poetic novel, based loosely on Shearer’s own experience of losing his brother, humorously though sensitively...
Two English brothers unite after many years to make sense of the “bits and pieces” of memory, mortality and the thickness of blood in this poignant novel by Shearer (The Cloud Hunters, 2012, etc.).
Despite a recent surgery to remove his Stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme, a brain tumor the size of a billiard ball, milky-eyed, bushy-bearded Louis doesn’t have much time left. When his younger brother—the book's unnamed narrator—cares for him at his home in Australia, their cohabitation exposes the dysfunction, resentment and deep-seated friction between them. Louis, in childhood the stronger intellectually gifted brother, in adulthood has morphed into a bohemian who eschews traditional careers, hygiene and financial stability. The younger brother, “a disappointment from the start,” picks up the slack in his later years and now escorts Louis to his radiotherapy treatments, quizzes him about his bank PIN and replaces his broken tea kettle. Despite the brothers' witty, often playful exchanges, the narrator's care of Louis unleashes bitterness and jealousy. “To my mind, it had all been about Louis our whole lives….Which is no good to anybody—to be defined as simply being related to somebody else.” Shearer’s exquisite prose is most powerful when the younger brother comes to appreciate Louis’ quirks and unconventional choices and, in the end, eloquently grieves his passing. “We love whom we must, and then we grow, and love whom we will. But still we’re caught, like a fish with a swallowed hook, and we can swim downriver nearly all our lives, but end up getting tugged back to the past, to childhood, to our defenseless selves, and we are reeled in.”
This pensive, poetic novel, based loosely on Shearer’s own experience of losing his brother, humorously though sensitively expresses the complications of sibling relationships, the ambiguity of absolution, and the beauty of life in its last, tender moments.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6440-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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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