The novel’s foregone conclusion does little to help a narrow plotline to expand.
Delinsky (The Secret Between Us, 2008, etc.), mining the same emotional field as Jodi Picoult, stumbles in this slow-moving account of two sisters, one of whom is in a coma.
The Snow family defines itself thus: They are the family of a runner. Robin is a marathoner of Olympic potential (the tryouts are soon) and much of her adult life has been working toward this moment. She is the star, and her mother Kathryn and sister Molly have devoted a good portion of their lives to making Robin’s easier. Though Molly experiences intense bouts of jealousy and sadness that Robin is so clearly the favorite daughter, she nonetheless adores her older sister. One evening there is a call from the hospital to the house Molly and Robin share. The news is dire. At the hospital Molly finds Robin unconscious from a heart attack. A fellow runner found her cold body on the road, administered CPR and called an ambulance, but his act of kindness has inadvertently caused the Snow family’s most heartbreaking dilemma. Tests show that Robin is brain-dead, but Kathryn refuses to accept that her daughter, a lifelong fighter, is defeated. Molly too is crushed, but instead of a bedside vigil, she wants answers. She finds Robin’s journal and soon all secrets are revealed: Robin was diagnosed with an enlarged heart, which she inherited from her real father (Kathryn was pregnant when she met Charlie, but he raised her as his own). There are a number of subplots: Molly begins to develop a relationship with David, the runner who found Robin; David, a high-school teacher, suspects one of his students is anorexic; brother Chris is being blackmailed by an employee Molly fired from the family’s nursery. Yet none of this is able to spark the narrative to life—a week of tears and hard decisions about organ donation and ending life support is certainly emotionally fertile, but in Delinsky’s hands it feels overwrought and predictable.
The novel’s foregone conclusion does little to help a narrow plotline to expand.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52492-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2008
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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