A riveting family melodrama.
This second installment of a fiction trilogy continues to follow a family over the course of decades.
The Schism family went their separate ways after a young one’s death in the 1950s. Daughter Isabel ultimately had a daughter of her own, Abra Cadabra “Snap” Weaver. Snap’s (likely) father, Leif Lambrochet, left for the Army, where he stayed for 35 years before retiring. He subsequently gets a security job at Null Data Corporation, the San Francisco tech company from which Leif’s sister, Clare, recently retired. The company, founded by Jay Null, a man the siblings knew years ago as John Knot, has its share of problems. In one instance, Leif and a co-worker discover a hanging body in a conference room. Federal agent Norman Vernon investigates this apparent suicide as a murder and interrogates Leif as a suspect. Around the same time, numerous current and former employees file a lawsuit against NDC and insurance companies over retirement funds that are suffering financial losses. While much of this narrative unfolds in “the Oughts,” some characters revisit the past, including Clare, who reads entries from her personal journal, and Isabel, who peruses her father George’s memoirs and manuscripts. As in the preceding volume, Veith fills the pages with vivid characters and stories. For example, there’s mysterious NDC business analyst Henderson, whose first name is “N/A” in company paperwork. And while the novel is methodically paced, myriad happenings keep it free of lulls, from so-called Black Monday (a series of NDC firings in 1988) to Snap’s encounter with nasty parasites in Paraguay during a stint in the Peace Corps. The author skillfully and comprehensively maneuvers the gripping narrative through ever changing time periods, though he concentrates the bulk of the story on Leif and Clare. Discussions and emails about the impending lawsuit dominate the tale in the final act.
A riveting family melodrama.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72834-658-8
Page Count: 608
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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