An elegant and often compelling multigenerational drama.
In this debut novel centered on a Greek American family in 1950s Chicago, a girl tries to protect her brother from danger.
The story opens in 1981, when Sophie is a kindergarten teacher. A student reminds her of a boy she once knew, which causes her to recall distant memories in 1956, when she was 12 and her brother, Niko, was almost 9. Their household is a tense place; their parents are constantly at each other’s throats, and their father drinks too much. When Sophie calls them “damn idiots” for their behavior, her dad slams her against the wall. In this abusive environment, she’s the only one looking out for young Niko. She yearns for the love and comfort that her grandparents offer her, but her dad despises his Greek in-laws; Niko, however, reveres his father and desperately wants to help him work on cars in the garage. The boy proves to have a sharp mind and physical dexterity, so he takes part in his father’s illegal dealings with Taki, a conniving uncle, and Vitto Biducci, “the most feared thug on the East Side.” One night, they assign Niko to steal valuables from locked cars. As his involvement in criminal activities escalates, so does the reader’s sense of dread. The 1956 storyline simmers with tension, but Voss sometimes jumps to other eras to chronicle other characters’ stories, such as that of Elena, Sophie’s great-grandmother, as she travels to America by steamship with five children in tow. Sophie’s parents’ backstories receive attention, as well, but these sections aren’t as engaging as the main plot. Still, the prose is always excellent, as when Voss offers vivid glimpses of the urban landscape: “In the darkening sky, Sophie saw the flaming smokestacks of the steel mills light up the night.” Characters are equally well drawn: “She looks like a cartoon in the funny papers,” Sophie’s cousin George says about his aunt who’s dressed up for a family outing. Overall, the text is entertaining and vibrant, rich with details of Greek American culture, ’50s and ’60s Chicago, and distinctive members of Sophie’s clan and community.
An elegant and often compelling multigenerational drama.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73472-600-8
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Nature's Light Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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