A beautiful reminder that the world is full of tragedy, but life-changing joy and connection might be just around the corner.
A man makes his way across the country to find his high school crush—accompanied by his adult daughter, two orphans, and a cat with the power to predict death.
PJ Halliday may have won $1.5 million from the scratch-off lottery ticket he drunkenly bought at a gas station 10 years ago, but his life has been far from lucky. At 63, he’s an alcoholic hoarder who’s had three heart attacks and been fired from his job as a postal worker in Pondville, Massachusetts (they didn’t like it when he drove the mail truck into a pond). But the two tragedies in PJ’s life happened when his teenage daughter died and his wife, Ivy, left him. PJ, ever the charmer, now has breakfast every day at Ivy’s house with her and her new partner, Fred, which is where he sees the obituary that lets him know his high school sweetheart is now single. She’s all the way in Arizona and PJ can’t technically drive (again, the DUIs), but he begins hatching a plan to go confess his love to her as soon as Ivy and Fred leave for an Alaskan vacation. PJ isn’t looking forward to being left alone in Pondville, since he has a complicated relationship with his other daughter, Sophie. But what PJ doesn’t expect is to suddenly become the guardian of two orphans, his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Luna and Ollie are dealing with the violent deaths of both their parents, although Luna is convinced that her real father is a soap opera star and that she needs to go find him. PJ figures they can combine their trips and decides to take the children with him on a road trip to find his true love and Luna’s father. Sophie, who’s struggling herself and a little concerned about the kids’ safety, decides to come along. They also bring Pancakes, a cat who wandered out of a nursing home and into PJ’s life. Pancakes has the ability to predict death, which comes into play surprisingly often over the course of the road trip. Hartnett is a master at balancing quirky elements and some truly dark subject matter, like PJ’s grief and the kids’ parents’ deaths. PJ is a remarkable character who remains fascinating and often charming even when he’s frustrating, but every character—even the people PJ briefly encounters on the road trip—feels fully realized.
A beautiful reminder that the world is full of tragedy, but life-changing joy and connection might be just around the corner.Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780593873441
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
