A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.
The complicated relationship among three Doncaster lasses.
Written in savory Yorkshire dialect (perfectly comprehensible to non-locals after a page or two), Brown’s first novel follows the trio from age 11 in 1998, when they bond on the first day of “big school,” through a fraught reunion in 2017, when a long-kept secret finally comes out. We begin with Rachael’s first-person recollections of a wild night out in their teens that sketches the social and emotional currents informing their interactions. Rach’s two-parent family sits at the top of the British working class, and as the girls start big school has just moved to a better neighborhood. Kel and Shaz have the “same single mums they called ‘mam,’ same state-sponsored quid-a-day [lunch] money, same missing dads.” In Rach’s view, Shaz is the tough girl who knows more and dares more, though Rach also thinks she lies about some of her escapades and isn’t afraid to say so, while Kel anxiously tries to keep the peace. When the novel switches to Shaz’s point of view, a second-person narration that reflects her alienated psychological state, we see that to her Rach is the solid, self-assured one clearly headed for better things. That’s why Shaz can’t reveal a shameful episode involving the boy Rach is dating, “cuz it’s whorish behaviour, innit.” In their world, girls are supposed to be sexually free but not “slags,” and signals are equally mixed about rising out of the working class. Is going to “uni” and getting a decent job making something of yourself, or getting above yourself? There aren’t any definite answers as Brown perceptively chronicles the shifting power dynamics of the girls’ teenage years and then their separate odysseys as Rachael becomes a teacher, Kel moves to America, and Shaz sinks lower and lower with drugs, drink, and lousy jobs. A moving conclusion opens old wounds but suggests healing is possible for women who have meant so much to each other for so long.
A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250342881
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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
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
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