The comforting message here seems to be that the family that loses its money together stays together.
The already iffy equilibrium of a couple in mid-marriage distress comes under new pressures when the British economy crashes in Buchan’s good-natured domestic dramedy (Wives Behaving Badly, 2006, etc.).
Although 40-something Londoners Annie and Tom have slept in separate bedrooms ever since their daughter Mia stormed out five years ago never to return, they maintain the façade of a comfortable marriage. Then comes the recession. Tom, who has always put career before family involvement, loses his prestigious job at the BBC World Service. Nurturing Annie, a moderately paid hospital administrator, must carry an increasingly heavy financial burden. Next Mia’s twin brother Jake, whose high-end furniture-making business has tanked, moves back home with his baby daughter Maisie when his coldly ambitious wife Jocasta leaves him for another man and a lucrative job in NYC (one that seems unlikely given the banking crash). To make matters worse, Tom’s difficult mother Hermione can no longer afford assisted living and moves into the bedroom Tom’s been using so he must move back into the master bedroom with Annie. Dormant sexual tensions waken between saintly Annie and sympathetic Tom despite long-simmering resentments, mostly surrounding Mia’s estrangement from the family (another plot point lacking credibility: The original argument seems rather mild and one wonders why no one has checked for Mia on Facebook or Google, given the prominence of the Internet in the plot—Tom gambles disastrously with day trading). Soon the family is pulling together. Younger daughter Em, who previously lived at home supported by Tom while trying to write fiction, is surprised how much she enjoys the job she finds in PR. And when Jocasta announces that she wants to take Maisie to America, devoted father Jake mounts a solid campaign to retain custody. Tom becomes more self-aware about the mistakes he’s made as he and Annie slowly reconnect. As for the long-lost Mia…
The comforting message here seems to be that the family that loses its money together stays together.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02236-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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