A unique, poignant, and slightly taboo novel about family, biology, and evolution.
In the wake of their father’s death, two half siblings confront their pasts and try to rewrite their futures.
Hauser (The From-Aways, 2014) returns with a strange and heartbreaking novel about what it means to be a family. When their estranged father, Dr. Ian Grey, drowns while conducting research, adult half siblings Elsa and Nolan Grey are brought together for the first time in years. Ian, along with other peculiar scientists and researchers, lived on Leap’s Island in the Gulf of Mexico, where he studied the undowny bufflehead, a duck species that seems to be evolving backwards. Before his death, Ian had become obsessed with one duck, Duck Number Twelve or the Paradise Duck, which he described as “a freak among its peers.” Traveling to Leap’s Island, the half siblings hope to gather Ian’s possessions and find answers to their lingering questions. Elsa believes Ian committed suicide, but Nolan is adamant he didn’t. They both wonder if their own failures, inadequacies, and mistakes caused their father to withdraw from the world. Elsa and Nolan must also grapple with their fraught relationship—full of taboos, secrets, and abandonment issues. Playing with time, memory, and point of view, the novel is structurally ambitious, though sometimes to its own detriment. Its strongest parts are its ruminations on the Grey family dynamics, so the portraits of the islanders feel expendable. Hauser's ability to render the complexities of family relationships with radical honesty is a feat. When Elsa thinks back on her childhood, Hauser writes, “her father had been taken from her over and over again, and Elsa was tired of coming up with new ways to suffer in his absence.” A lesser writer would not be able to deliver the disturbing and weird with the grace that Hauser does.
A unique, poignant, and slightly taboo novel about family, biology, and evolution.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54462-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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