Great fun, and with a few poignant moments too.
Nantucket in summer, four chummy couples, romantic intrigue and a possible murder, in the latest from Hilderbrand (A Summer Affair, 2008, etc.).
The book opens with the death of Greg and Tess MacAvoy. Sailing from Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard for their 12th anniversary, the beloved couple is found drowned, trapped under their boat. Ed Kapenash, Nantucket Chief of Police and one of Greg’s best friends, has to break the news to his wife Andrea, Tess’s cousin. They are joined in mourning by rich, cultured Addison Wheeler; his wife Phoebe, a pill-popping zombie since her twin’s death on 9/11; wild Delilah Drake (in love with Greg); and her stoic husband Jeff. Inseparable for years, the four couples loved and respected each other, vacationed together, watched each other’s children; in fact, they seemed to have an idyllic life of friendship on the island—until the death of Greg and Tess uncovers all their dirty secrets. The toxicology report finds heroin in the bloodstream of sweet, overcautious Tess, a kindergarten teacher and doting mother of twins. Ed also finds five phone calls on Tess’s phone from Addison the morning of the sail. Were the MavAvoys’ deaths an accident or a murder plot gone wrong? Much of the mystery hinges on what happened between Greg, a music teacher at the local high school, and April Peck, a student who several months earlier accused him of sexual misconduct. With a few strings pulled by Ed, Greg’s career was saved, but the strain of the scandal has unforeseen consequences on the surviving friends. In mourning, each feels somehow culpable; slowly they confront together the sordid underbelly of their seemingly respectable lives. If the plot becomes a bit stretched at the end, never mind: Hilderbrand has a master’s touch at characterization, making the novel’s players seem so familiar that the revelation of their secrets is irresistible.
Great fun, and with a few poignant moments too.Pub Date: July 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-04389-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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