An unsatisfying character study of a middle-aged man in crisis that fails to distinguish itself from others of its type.
A pill-popping anesthesiologist and bird-watcher is forced to confront his past when his estranged mother dies.
Adrian Mandrick seems to live a perfect life: He has a beautiful wife, Stella, two bright young children, a well-paying job, and the distinction of possessing the third-longest bird-watching “life-list” in North America. That is, he’s seen more unique species of birds in North America than all but two people…and one of them just died, so the No. 2 spot is closer than ever. But Adrian is also addicted to prescription drugs and has kept his past a secret from everyone, including Stella and his closest friends. When he was a child, his mother ran away from his father with him and his brother, and when his father found them a year later, he informed Adrian that his mother had molested him when he was too young to remember. Adrian is now estranged from both of his parents, and when his mother suddenly tries to get back in touch, he ignores her calls. But her reappearance nevertheless sends him into a downward spiral that takes him from adultery to illness to the obsessive pursuit of the supposedly extinct ivory-billed woodpecker. White, who has an MFA in dramatic writing from NYU and teaches creative writing at DePauw University, makes her debut with this frustrating novel. Adrian’s cavalier disregard for his advantages in life makes it hard to sympathize with him, particularly since White’s treatment of his abuse is superficial and unconvincing. Stella is also reduced to a stereotype of an unhappy wife. The medical and ornithological components of the novel are deeply researched, and Adrian’s love of birds is its most compelling feature. But White hints at themes connected to his passion that are never fully explored, including climate change and Adrian’s Native American heritage. Ultimately, the novel feels more like a collection of ideas than a finished product.
An unsatisfying character study of a middle-aged man in crisis that fails to distinguish itself from others of its type.Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7430-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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