Although simple in message and execution, this tale about three brothers turns into an addictive read.
Podbury (These Tumultuous Years, 2016) explores how the early influence of a hard, unloving Scottish father shapes the successes and failures of his three sons.
Silas McCracken remains largely disliked in the Scottish town of Kinross—an aversion he’s fooled himself into believing to be respect. He marries the gentle and submissive Mary, and the two bear three sons: their twins, Robert and Harold, whom Silas refuses nothing, and the sickly Angus, who receives only his father’s constant scorn. Rob and Harry attend the renowned St. Giles College in Britain, spiteful of their wealthier peers and relying largely on cleverness and guile to succeed. After graduation, Harry travels the world, seeing London, France, postwar Germany, and America, a con man working under the guise of a stockbroker, seducing and robbing women and their families. Less savvy but just as cutthroat, Rob moves to London and falls under the tutelage of a Mafia don in Soho, rising in the organization’s ranks while gaining great power and numerous enemies, threatening the family he loves. Left behind, Angus adopts his mother’s kindness, his hard work and honesty awarding him an apprenticeship, and later a partnership, with the town’s most beloved carpenter, offering him the means to build a family with his first love, Maggie Campbell. These chapters on Angus’ provincial life are the lengthy novel’s strongest: light in tone and good humored, not without conflict or tragedy but neither diluted by its small-town setting. Rob’s and Harry’s “grander” exploits are more focused on violence and subterfuge, invoking aspects of spy and crime thrillers, though once it is clear neither one has any hope (or desire) to be redeemed, there’s only so much perverse enjoyment to be taken from the pair’s wanton criminality. Maggie receives a surprising and significant amount of focus in the narrative as she attempts to make her own way after falling for Rob, who callously leaves her pregnant and in ruin. Regrettably, once she is reunited with Angus, she fades into the story’s background. Like the tale’s commentary on the evils of ego and ambition, its religious imagery is a touch on-the-nose, with the Mary-raised carpenter Angus cast as a Christ figure, while his brothers’ failings represent deals with the devil.
Although simple in message and execution, this tale about three brothers turns into an addictive read.Pub Date: April 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8700-7
Page Count: 676
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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