by Alma Katsu ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2022
Admirable in its aims but needed more finesse.
In 1944, the lives of a newspaper reporter, a newly ordained minister, Japanese internees, and a Japanese scientist intertwine around a mysterious illness.
“There’s a long history of violence against Asians in America. If you’re unaware of this, it’s not surprising: it doesn’t make the history books, it’s not taught in classrooms,” the author writes in an afterword. Her novel combines historical events, such as Roosevelt’s executive order forcing Japanese Americans into internment camps, with supernatural elements from Japanese folklore. Chapters alternate among the perspectives of minister Archie Mitchell, reporter Fran Gurstwold, Camp Minidoka internees Meiko Briggs and her daughter Aiko, and scientist Wasaburo Oishi’s journal entries. What unites these disparate characters becomes clear as more is revealed about the illness spreading through the internment camp and the dangerous balloons or parachutes that have begun appearing in several states. While at first the plot moves at a dizzying pace, especially in Archie’s first chapters, a balance of incisive detail and steady progression is struck toward the middle of the book. What appears to be a story of supernatural suspense mixed with historical fiction transforms into an important reminder of the United States’ short memory of its own atrocities and its long history of anti-Asian sentiment, violence, and racism. Didactic writing is both a strength and a weakness here. At first, important parallels are created; for instance, “America was not Nazi Germany. Rounding up citizens in camps in order to kill them: it was impossible. It went against everything America stood for—everything Americans said they stood for. Yet here she was, dying in an internment camp.” Unfortunately, by the end, these notes become too frequent and heavy-handed. Even so, it's enjoyable to experience the ambitious, weblike weaving of the book's many elements.
Admirable in its aims but needed more finesse.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32833-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
by Freida McFadden ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 28, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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