A bittersweet drama that delicately captures the moods of the human spirit.
Two friends attempt to fulfill a request from beyond the grave in this novel.
Months have passed since 62-year-old Paul Marden was released from the hospital after an unidentifiable infection nearly took his life. Now, living on disability payments and his pension in a neighborhood battered by Hurricane Sandy, he grapples every day with the constant pain that pervades his body. Struggling to walk home one evening, he takes a ride from a familiar-seeming stranger: Lelee Connors, a transgender woman who was once his childhood neighbor. As the two develop a friendship, Lelee reveals that she has the extraordinary ability to communicate with the dead. Despite her peaceful lifestyle, her reputation and well-being are being threatened by a man named Michael Odenkirk, the host of a television show that focuses on defaming psychically gifted individuals. When Lelee channels the spirit of a 1960s radio host known as Happy Howie, he explains that his own career was destroyed by Odenkirk, who publicized his identity as a gay man and falsely suggested that he was a child molester. Howie implores Paul and Lelee to help him clear his name and enact justice. Meanwhile, Paul is occupied with his elderly father, who has dementia. Although their relationship was precarious in his youth, Paul desperately wants him to have a good quality of life. Unfortunately, Paul has strong doubts about the level of care his father is receiving in his nursing home. The expressive quality of Lerman’s (The Stargazer’s Embassy, 2017, etc.) writing reflects her prodigious experience as a poet. The narrative touches on a number of complex topics, including the relationship between transgender individuals and the rest of the LGBTQ community, the state of care for those in assisted living facilities, and the impact of the media, in a way that feels organic and true to life. Lelee’s characterization is especially intricate: She proves to be poised, intelligent, and kind but intensely frustrated and quickly angered by insensitivity. As the characters move through their daily routines, there remains an evocative awareness of their mortality.
A bittersweet drama that delicately captures the moods of the human spirit.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-57962-575-7
Page Count: 217
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 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
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