Lowry’s novel offers humor, sharp social commentary, startling twists, and a satisfying conclusion.
In Lowry’s novel, a repressed politician’s wife finds unexpected strength in the story of her long-lost great-great-aunt.
When Rachel Jackson’s mother passes on to her an heirloom—a small blue trunk that belonged to her “crazy” great-great aunt Marit, who was never spoken of by her family—going through the old papers within it to learn more about Marit seems like a pleasant distraction. Why do the contents include a napkin from a notorious speakeasy, a hank of horsehair, and a news clipping about gangsters? Rachel is secretly miserable, despite her privileged life. Her husband Blake, a conservative Arizona congressman, is running for reelection, and she feels stifled playing the part of perfect political wife. Her situation further darkens when she accidentally finds a woman’s scarf—not her own—in Blake’s computer bag while looking for a rubber band. The narrative shifts: Carrying all her worldly possessions in a blue trunk, Marit Sletmo emigrates from Norway to Wisconsin with her older brother Jorgan and sister Ingrid in 1904 as a naive 17-year-old. Jorgan, her legal guardian, plans to marry her off to a self-absorbed, rich older man to fund his own ambitions. When her budding friendship with an unconventional older woman causes her fiance to break their engagement, Jorgan has her declared insane (and in a time when almost anything could be diagnosed as “hysteria,” that’s appallingly easy to do). He fears that Marit might reveal a damaging secret about him. (“We have decided you should go away…we think it’s the best thing for you.”) The perspective shifts between Rachel’s first-person point of view and Marit’s close third person, an effective way of highlighting the immediacy of the present and the distance of the past. Both women are compelling, sympathetic, and memorable characters. Their interwoven stories reveal unexpected parallels between their very different lives and personalities as each finds the inner strength needed to break free from captivity—Rachel figuratively and Marit literally. Inspired in part by the life of the author’s own ancestor, Marit’s tale will resonate long after readers finish the book.
Lowry’s novel offers humor, sharp social commentary, startling twists, and a satisfying conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798888244418
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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
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
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