Reading this sharply observed novel about New York's wealthier denizens is doubtless more enjoyable than it would be to...
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Two families figure prominently in the whispered gossip hissing among the mothers at St. Timothy’s: the Skinkers, Jed and Philippa, he the scion of the last family-owned investment bank in New York, she beautiful, detached, often drunk; and the Curtises, John and Minnie, a new family with shiny new money. On the other hand, no one can ever remember the Hogans’ names—Dan is an assistant district attorney, i.e. a working stiff, and Gwen stays home with their daughter, Mary. But Gwen was friends with Philippa’s sister back home in small-town Massachusetts, which gives the two an odd affinity for each other—which might help or might hurt when Jed Skinker and John Curtis become the focus of an investigation at the DA’s office, led by Dan Hogan. Macy (Spoiled, 2009, etc.) knows just how to nail the status anxieties of the rich; her people are ultraprivileged but insecure, constantly comparing themselves against each other. Minnie, the new mother, doesn't quite fit in with the other St. Timothy's women at the all-important morning drop-off: "Despite the fact that points in this town had long ago ceased being given for grooming or comportment, Minnie Curtis' hair was blown out and styled, her clothes smart and expensively tailored, rather than expensively draped and drawstringed. Was that an actual matching skirt and jacket she was wearing—a suit?" The horror! The perspective rotates among Philippa, Minnie, and Gwen as well as their husbands, Philippa's 7-year-old daughter, Laura, and a group of other mothers who form a kind of Greek chorus reminiscent of Big Little Lies. It's all very stylized and entertaining, and if the characters never spring fully to life inside their expensively casual outfits and two-story entrance halls, that feels almost beside the point.
Reading this sharply observed novel about New York's wealthier denizens is doubtless more enjoyable than it would be to actually join their crowd.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-43415-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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