Not for diabetics.
A tear-jerker from veteran Christian novelist Martinusen about young love revisited in the shadow of untimely death.
Carrie is the woman who has everything: a handsome, devoted, successful husband; a little boy she adores; a remarkably loyal best friend; and a warm community. Of course, we know she must be hiding a secret sorrow—even before we discover she is dying of multiple sclerosis. Her sorrow is personified in the charming ne’er-do-well Graham, who loved and left her one dreamy Italian summer many years before. This could only be because he has a secret sorrow of his own—and indeed, over the course of the story, he is forced to face the childhood trauma that drove him from the only woman he ever loved. The evidence of this trauma, which involves an unlikely sub-plot about the IRA, is buried with a secret of Carrie’s in Italy. As Carrie dies, her stalwart friend Lauren goes to unearth these tokens of the past—and learns something about herself, of course. Sadly, the only motivation Carrie and Graham have for keeping any secrets for a decade is to provide the author with a third-act revelation. The plot proceeds through an obstacle course of unlikely coincidences, justified—because this is Christian fiction—as evidence that God is at work behind the scenes. The meaning of Christianity here often seems boiled down to the belief that a handsome stranger will enter your life at the moment you are genuinely ready to commit. In a similarly pandering way, the characters’ love of art is represented by a deep attachment to Andrew Lloyd Weber, Salvador Dalí and Bouguereau; no chilly elitism here.
Not for diabetics.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4082-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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
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