Short but cogent stories that stimulate as often as they educate.
Clovis (Quantum Leaps in Princeton’s Place, 2015, etc.) continues her fictionalized tales of residents, university students, and faculty in Princeton, New Jersey, as they endure and battle discrimination throughout history.
Many of the real-life people portrayed in this book have harrowing back stories. Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, for example, once enraged the Mafia with his bestselling tell-all book, but now he’s free from constant fear as a teacher at Princeton University. Most others face racism, including the author’s daughter, Michaela, who recalls schoolteachers treating her unfairly. Clovis uses different voices to provide social context, as in a lengthy section featuring Michelle Obama, who attended Princeton in the 1980s; in it, the author quotes the first lady’s 2016 New Hampshire speech in support of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, which discusses bigotry as well as sexism. It’s a startling piece about intolerance at the highest levels and mirrors a later chapter, in which university students in 2015 stage a protest to have Woodrow Wilson’s name removed from the school. The former U.S. president, the author says, was not only in favor of segregation, but also discouraged African-Americans from applying to Princeton when he was head of the university. Throughout, Clovis advocates examining history in order to bring about social change. For example, in 1992, District of Columbia public defender Robert Wilkins was pulled over on suspicion of drug trafficking by Maryland cops (which Clovis faintly links to Princeton via a somewhat similar case); Wilkins’ ensuing lawsuit was both a triumph and a landmark, requiring the state of Maryland to maintain detailed records of traffic stops. The book touches on other unsettling subjects, such as the story of the infamous Menendez brothers; they were convicted of murdering their parents, whose graves are in Princeton Cemetery. One of the best stories, however, relates to Sept. 11, 2001: on her daily train rides to New York City, Clovis noticed that some of her fellow commuters were suddenly gone after the terrorist attack, their fates unknown. This section provides a showcase for the author’s remarkable prose: “I could hear my footsteps echo against the damp cement walkway as I rushed to the train. The echo reminded me of the fear behind me and being alone. Death.”
Short but cogent stories that stimulate as often as they educate.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5043-7371-5
Page Count: 108
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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