Clever and witty: the best kind of summer book.
A subversively charming debut about a group of happily imperfect New Yorkers from Dublin-based Casey, wife of novelist Joseph O'Connor.
The novel is bookended by Lucy’s story: After the financial crash, Lucy, Richard and their two small boys are forced out of their posh London lives and move to Manhattan, where Richard makes due at a reduced salary, and they take over the apartment he kept for business. Lucy learns she’s much nicer away from all the haves, and she discovers she’s actually in love with her very kind husband. Lucy’s new friend Julia, meanwhile, has a dilemma: Can she, a high-powered screenwriter, go on with a flaky yoga instructor? She thinks not, and so, shockingly, she leaves her husband, Kristian, and their children and has a little nervous breakdown, followed by a lot of career advancement. Meanwhile, Julia’s best friend Christy (her husband, Vaughn, is a rich and powerful senior citizen) is learning, after the nanny’s abrupt departure, that she likes taking care of her twin girls—especially when the dashing, fun-loving Irish doorman is with them. When Christy’s 40-year-old stepdaughter Lianne insists Christy accompany her to an “equine assisted learning” retreat, Christy invites Julia, who invites Lucy (Christy is a bit jealous of this), and then Robyn finds her way in (although she’s already part of the group in a way, having had affairs with both Vaughn and Kristian). The trip is a disaster for spoiled Lianne, but Robyn decides she’s had it with Ryan, whose promising literary debut has been followed by years of Robyn slaving away at a mattress showroom for his art. Each chapter feels like a well-composed short story, and the collected whole is fresh and bright with characters that defy expectations.
Clever and witty: the best kind of summer book.Pub Date: June 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16021-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Amy Einhorn/Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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