An intimate and captivating story of one woman’s rediscovery of herself.
A mother approaching middle age struggles to fulfill her youthful ambitions in this debut novella.
Elizabeth left an unsatisfying and abusive marriage nearly eight years ago, and she finds herself on the cusp of another life-changing decision. Years into a mutually supportive relationship with the kind and steady Gabriel, with whom she raises her 9-year-old son, Elizabeth faces her 36th birthday with uncertainty, trepidation, and hunger for meaning and fulfillment. She’d harbored dreams of writing fiction since she was a child, and she can’t tell if her current existential itch means that she wants to give birth to another baby or a novel. Gabe is clear about his lack of desire for more children, which leaves Elizabeth feeling hurt, confused, and staggering under the weight of unfulfilled potential. When a writing-coach friend suggests that she start a blog, she takes the first tentative steps toward becoming her most complete self: “selfish, whiny, beautiful, grumpy, funny, a rotten mother, mother-of-the-year, flustered, depressed, a slob, antsy, flighty, crying, friends with a vibrator, a dreamer, a story teller.” In this novella about the anguished process of becoming an author, Bartasius creates a vividly relatable character who shares her first name, revealing the latter’s appealing contradictions and unquenchable desire to tell stories. Writers will immediately identify with such statements as “The guilt of not writing stagnated like a birdbath breeding mosquitoes,” and most mothers have viewed their role as Elizabeth does: “a dichotomy of loving my job as a parent and praying I could be ‘on break’ to write or travel or take a nap instead of making egg salad.” Occasionally, the imaginative metaphors are difficult to comprehend, as when the narrator worries, “I wasn’t sure I would survive the twisted spat of psychological winter,” and the presence of two unrelated characters named Jessica create slight confusion. But all in all, this is a riveting tale of maturing womanhood and an insightful peek into the creative process.
An intimate and captivating story of one woman’s rediscovery of herself.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-563-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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