A fun, funny look at gay life in Toronto.
A gay young man ponders his future in Yeh’s novel.
Medical student Daniel is in a happy, loving relationship with David in Toronto, but he’s got the nagging sense that not everything is as it should be. For one thing, David’s brother wants him to be a sperm donor for him and his partner, which Daniel isn’t really on board with. In the background is Marcus, who Daniel dated before David and who is often on Daniel’s mind. As the months go by, Daniel starts to realize that he and David are forming a family, and that David has been doing the heavy lifting in their relationship; Daniel resolves to commit to the relationship and ask David to marry him. Of course, once Daniel makes this decision, Marcus reappears (“There he was: my ex-boyfriend in a trench coat and Ray-Bans, leaning against a glorious red convertible with cream-coloured bucket seats. I felt like Mia Sara summoned out of school by Ferris Bueller. It wasn’t a Ferrari 250GT, but it might as well have been”). Ultimately, Daniel has to decide what shape he wants his adult life to take, and whether his “happily ever after” is with David. The novel has a large cast of quirky characters, most of them artists. The narrative covers a year in the life of Daniel, who moves through a series of interesting events on his way to discovering who he is and what he wants; he attends a literary salon in which all of the readers are naked, consoles his peers about their messy love lives, graduates from medical school, fights with his best friend, endures his brother’s homophobic girlfriend, and becomes part of an art exhibit when nude photos of him are included in one of Marcus’ installations. The story is a fun trip through the lives of this eclectic group of friends, and the relationship between Daniel and David is equal parts raunchy and sweet. This is the third book in a trilogy, but it works fine as a standalone story.
A fun, funny look at gay life in Toronto.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781771838221
Page Count: 331
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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