While this tale moves slowly, the determined hero remains a complex fish out of water.
A novel focuses on an Indian man’s eclectic experiences in 1980s Paris.
As Verma’s (The Fine Print and Other Yarns, 2017) story begins, a civil servant named Sanjay is seated at his desk in 1984. Sanjay lives in New Delhi and, though his job has perks, it is not exactly a dream come true. When the opportunity materializes for Sanjay to apply for a one-year training assignment in Paris, he seizes it. Perhaps after the training, he could work for the United Nations or somewhere abroad. Sanjay is eventually accepted into the program and, along with some fellow Indians who will also participate, he embarks for Paris. Sanjay and his compatriots soon learn that the differences between their home country and France are numerous. They might as well be on another planet. Almost immediately, there is a sense of homesickness. The men have a limited knowledge of French and there is much to learn about this strange city. But what would people think of Sanjay if he turned around and went back to India? Sanjay slowly but surely learns to treasure all that is around him. The Luxembourg Gardens, Château de Fontainebleau, and the Eiffel Tower are majestic sights the likes of which he has never experienced before. He learns to love merely walking the city streets and seeing the many captivating neighborhoods. Later on, he even falls for a girl from Lebanon. But as he knows from the start, his time in Paris is limited. When all is said and done, will he ever go home again? This intriguing tale often progresses at a slow, calculated pace. Based purely on the book’s title, readers will likely surmise that Sanjay will get to Paris one way or another. Yet it still takes a while for the protagonist to do so. Readers must then learn of Sanjay and his countrymen arriving at the airport, getting checked into their hostel, and finding out that the restaurant there serves only dinner and is quite expensive. While readers will get the message that these Indian visitors find themselves in a peculiar place, the information does not always dazzle. The dialogue also tends to fizzle as characters often state the obvious. One player points out, as if reading from a language instruction book, “I wanted to go to Madrid, but I’ve heard they are sending me to Bayonne in the Basque region.” What provide greater, lasting substance are Sanjay’s more intricate feelings. While he learns to love Paris, he still experiences periods of immense loneliness. Even as his French improves and his appreciation of things like the country’s television shows increases, he can often feel lost in this new world. While a brief trip to Provence introduces him to the nuances of the Provençal accent, he remains an outsider. As he reflects on his future options, readers may long to know what exactly will become of him. Although many of the details of his time in France are predictable, Sanjay’s evolving inner self keeps the story alive.
While this tale moves slowly, the determined hero remains a complex fish out of water.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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