A melancholy story about love, loss, and unnecessary suffering.
A woman looks back on her life with her husband and his gay lover.
Inspired by the love life of novelist E.M. Forster, Roberts’ new book captures an unconventional—and illegal—love triangle in 1950s England. Opening in October 1999, retired schoolteacher Marion is writing a “confession of sorts” to Patrick, her husband’s lover, for whom she is caring after a near-fatal stroke: “When I am finished, I plan to read this account to you, Patrick, because you can’t answer back any more.” From there, Marion’s letter travels back 48 years to when she met her future husband, Tom. She tells the story of her pining for Tom and how their friendship turned into (an oft one-sided) courtship. The narrative framing allows her to offer insight into her past from the perch of the present (“I remember that I once felt intense and secret things, just like you, Patrick"). About Tom and Marion’s whirlwind wedding, she writes, “At the time it was thrilling, this dizzy rush into marriage, and it was flattering, too. But now I suspect he wanted to get it over with, before he changed his mind.” Eventually, the novel switches perspectives and offers Patrick’s journal entries from the past. He writes about his beloved job as a museum curator; his relationship with Tom (whom he calls “my policeman”); and navigating his sexuality during a time when being gay was illegal. As their lives become more entangled, Marion slowly realizes the truth about Patrick and Tom. When a rash and unforgivable decision is made, their lives are changed forever. The novel’s dueling perspectives allow both Marion and Patrick to explore the pain and joy of loving the same man. Roberts beautifully captures the devastation of being unable or unwilling to live in one’s truth, and the quiet ending offers a poignant moment of respite for everyone. Marion, Tom, and Patrick haven’t led the lives they expected or wanted to, but there’s still time left. Nothing can be taken back, but perhaps the truth can begin to heal them all.
A melancholy story about love, loss, and unnecessary suffering.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-14-313698-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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