The writing and insight go far to making this a good book, but a less-privileged and more-challenging cast might have made...
A family’s hopes, fears, loose ends, and fractures emerge during a few days in Manhattan.
Paul Essinger’s family gathers in New York to see him play in the U.S. Open. Parents Bill and Liesel fly in from Austin, where they have been teaching for some 40 years; she has recently published a memoir. Their oldest, Nathan, a tenured Harvard professor, comes with his two children. Paul’s older sister, Susie, an adjunct teacher, brings one of her two kids (the other’s sick) from Hartford, Connecticut. Jean, the baby and unmarried, flies in from London, where she works on TV documentaries. Completing the accomplished tribe are Paul’s partner, Dana, a former model who feels pressured by the visit’s “atmospheric intimacy,” and their son. (Two spouses can’t join the group this year.) Despite many markers of individual success, there’s a thread of dissatisfaction running through these 72 hours. Bill long ago chose family over career advancement. Susie did as well and is diffident about being pregnant again. Paul is unlikely to get past the Open’s second round; he’s mulling retirement. Nathan sees his peers rising into the realms of real power outside academia. Jean isn’t sure she can handle the guilt of wrecking a family in her affair with a married man. Markovits (You Don’t Have to Live Like This, 2015, etc.) offers little plot but well-crafted scenes that explore the chaos and affection, seams and separateness of large family gatherings—the disjointed conversations are especially fine. But his snapshots of Manhattan are too tidy, his characters' problems sometimes rarefied, such as choosing a restaurant or one’s words with the help. His novel recalls more than a few well-made yet not always satisfying Woody Allen films.
The writing and insight go far to making this a good book, but a less-privileged and more-challenging cast might have made it a better one.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-571-35008-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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