A robust, entrancing debut.
In this debut novel, a woman undertakes a road trip around France in an attempt to shed light on her family’s mysterious, troubled past.
In 2001, Sophie Zabél Sullivan, a Frenchwoman living in California, gets word that her mother, Marcelle, is near death. Upon arriving back in France, Sophie only has a few moments with her mother, who encourages her to seek out the identity of her grandfather—the father that Marcelle never knew. However, this is far from the only mystery in the family: Sophie’s two brothers, Thierry and Gérard, were both born out of wedlock during the World War II era. Sophie, meanwhile, is haunted by a sexual assault that she suffered at the hands of an elderly relative, suffers from depression, and is troubled by a recurring nightmare she doesn’t understand. Aided by her American friend, Kate, and using some of her mother’s old journals and family correspondence, she traverses France, interviewing family members and old acquaintances, looking for the answers that she and her siblings need in order to heal. As this multigenerational family saga of war, violence, and betrayal plays itself out, the two friends offer each other emotional support, and the trip proves cathartic for all involved. Along the way, the friends indulge in the French foodie obsessions that first brought them together while also taking in the history and folklore of the regions they visit. Bumpus does a remarkable job of capturing the nuances of the French landscapes and culture and of evoking the wartime occupation of France (“Beaten-down women with exhaustion etched into their eyes carried infants swaddled in mud and blood-spattered blankets”). Although the narrative can be a bit sentimental at times—even inducing compassion fatigue on occasion—Bumpus still manages time and again to strike at the emotional hearts of her characters to reveal their weaknesses and niggling vulnerabilities, as when Kate meets the grown daughter she gave up for adoption and later worries that she might have been disappointed with Kate’s weight.
A robust, entrancing debut.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-938314-90-2
Page Count: 322
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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