An aspirational fantasy in which the heroine not only survives, but flourishes through every crisis known to middle-age...
Seven years have passed since London financial executive Kate Reddy found what seemed the perfect balance of family and work in Pearson’s popular I Don’t Know How She Does It (2002).
Those years have not been kind. Since Kate left her high-powered position to move to the countryside with her family, her formerly adorable kids have grown into bratty teens. Ben is a typically noncommunicative 14-year-old; more alarmingly, in trying to keep up with the popular mean-girl crowd, 16-year-old Emily recently took a “belfie”—selfie of her naked backside—which has gone viral. Kate’s husband, Richard, once appealing and supportive, has become a bicycle fanatic with no time for his family. Laid off from his architectural firm, he has been retraining to become a counselor, yammering about mindfulness while Kate supports them all with part-time financial consulting gigs (and also manages Richard’s ailing parents). Urgently short of money, the Reddys have recently relocated to an impractical fixer-upper in “Commuterland” as Kate begins searching for a job back in London. Meanwhile, her 50th birthday, complete with perimenopause, looms. Like the other job-seeking women in her "returners" support group, she quickly learns that age and experience are not assets in the marketplace. Ironically, she ends up back at her old firm, which has changed name and ownership; fortunately, there's no one left who remembers her, since she has to prove her competence in a temporary position while pretending to be an acceptably youthful 42 with help from “lunchtime lipo.” Kate proves herself indispensable, of course. She also reconnects with rich American dreamboat Jack, to whom she did not succumb years ago out of apparently misplaced loyalty to Richard. A caring mother, sister, daughter, and daughter-in-law, Kate thrives because she is smarter, wittier, prettier, and more competent than everyone else. She is also self-congratulatory, even when supposedly self-deprecating, and merciless to her enemies, even one encountered in the waiting room of a therapy center for self-harming teens.
An aspirational fantasy in which the heroine not only survives, but flourishes through every crisis known to middle-age women in the higher income brackets.Pub Date: June 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-08608-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
