A rote exercise in blockbuster-building.
Bloated beginning of a new Bradford saga about English tycoons.
Departing from the Harte series, which rode so profitably upon the coattails of A Woman of Substance (1979), this launch is strictly for Bradford devotees. The story opens in 1904 at Ravenscar, ancestral manor of Edward Deravenel, scion of an aristocratic Yorkshire family that lost control of Deravenels, a trading company dating from the Norman Conquest with worldwide outposts in mining, exporting, agriculture—and soon, oil. For 60-odd years, the Deravenel Grants, the Lancashire branch of the family, have dominated the firm, where Edward’s father, Richard, toils as an undercompensated executive. When Richard and his brother-in-law Rick, along with Edward’s brother and cousin, perish in a mysterious fire near Deravenels Tuscan marble quarry, Edward and his cousin Neville investigate, convinced the Grants had their relatives killed. The Tuscan murders can’t be traced to the Grants, nor can power-behind-the-throne Margot, wife of demented Chairman Henry Grant, be implicated in the ensuing mayhem. Edward is beset by thugs as he leaves his mistress Lily’s house in London, and Lily dies after a rampaging stallion upsets her carriage. Since Edward’s faction never lacks the wherewithal to topple the Grants, needing only to marshal the evidence of mismanagement, embezzlement and Henry’s mental incapacity, the murders—including a poisoning committed at Edward’s behest—seem beside the point, as do the perfunctory sex scenes between irresistible Edward and his ladyloves, and spitfire French temptress Margot and her company stooges. Dogged attention to detail of the dress, décor and grazing habits of the well-to-do make for a ponderous pace. Despite umpteen novels (Just Rewards, Jan. 2006, etc.), Bradford lacks finesse at getting her characters in and out of rooms.
A rote exercise in blockbuster-building.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-312-35460-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2006
IN THE NEWS
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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