A thoughtful, if somewhat shallow, exploration of a woman’s spiritual quest.
A sudden, wrenching divorce becomes the catalyst for a woman’s journey of self-discovery in this Christian-themed novel set in the American South of the 1970s.
Mallie Vose, a 39-year-old wife and mother in Memphis, Tennessee, never really questioned the path that her life had taken. Since she was a child, she’d always assumed that she would marry and have children, and that her other ambitions would take a back seat to caring for family. When she met he future husband, Larry, in college, it seemed natural for her to abandon her artistic aspirations in order to become his wife. Two decades later, she’s faced with a cheating husband, a crumbling marriage, and little sense of her own identity. Her counseling sessions with Father Tom Matthews, an Episcopal priest, turn from talking to kissing. Later, although she’s not strongly religious, Mallie attends Christian life-coaching retreats, where she finds herself challenged to look at her life in new ways, and she creates a new, self-reliant identity, free of men. The story that debut author Gorman tells in this book, in which a privileged woman’s comfortable life is upended by a philandering husband, is hardly a new one; even Mallie’s rebound relationship with the creepily attentive Father Tom isn’t surprising. What makes the narrative exceptional is its nuanced approach to Mallie’s spiritual transformation. The protagonist takes her Christian beliefs for granted; she was raised in the Catholic Church and converted, like many other upwardly mobile Southerners, to Episcopalianism. However, although she seeks answers at Christian seminars, she doesn’t have a miraculous conversion to blind faith, but instead uses religious, intellectual, and psychological tools to refocus her life. The story glosses over some important issues, however; for example, Mallie gives occasional thought to “the inequities…of the black people in her life,” but the only African-American character is her childhood nurse, who only appears in memories. Many readers may find the lenient treatment of Father Tom to be disappointing as well.
A thoughtful, if somewhat shallow, exploration of a woman’s spiritual quest.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-409-7
Page Count: 275
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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