By turns laugh-out-loud funny and weep-into-your-hanky heartbreaking, Rabbit’s story is a powerful catharsis.
Her cancer is back, and all the love, humor, and stubbornness in the world won’t save Rabbit Hayes this time.
When 40-year-old Mia Hayes was a little girl, Johnny Faye, her brother Davey’s friend, dubbed her “Rabbit” for the pigtails bunched on her head. The nickname stuck. Johnny was the lead singer in Davey’s band, the Kitchen Sink, and the love of Rabbit’s life. From Johnny’s defending Rabbit from school-age bullies through the rise and fall of Kitchen Sink—a fall perpetuated by Johnny’s terminal illness—theirs was a true and clear love. Now Rabbit faces her last days in hospice care as she approaches death from metastatic breast cancer. Surrounded by her raucous family and friends, Rabbit tries to rally. Jack, Rabbit’s father, is devastated not only that his youngest will die, but also that his wife, Molly, seems to have given up on Rabbit. Yet Molly rarely leaves her daughter's side. Davey returns to Dublin from America, mourning for his sister, but finds some comfort in playing a paternal role for his 12-year-old niece, Juliet, whose biological father disappeared well before Rabbit gave birth to her. Rabbit’s older sister, Grace, tries to buttress the family, and everyone descends upon Rabbit’s room, holding a rather hilarious wake before her death. Although the ties binding her to her family pull taut, it’s the memories of Johnny that beckon more strongly. In Rabbit’s dreams, the narrative slips back in time to tell the love story between Rabbit and Johnny. McPartlin (The Space Between Us, 2012, etc.) deftly balances Rabbit’s disappointment and her family’s grief with humor. She possesses impeccable timing, creating rhythms of conversation that can evoke the banter of screwball comedies as well as the mournful dirge of loss.
By turns laugh-out-loud funny and weep-into-your-hanky heartbreaking, Rabbit’s story is a powerful catharsis.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05824-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 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
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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