by Elizabeth Graver ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2013
A lovely family portrait: elegiac yet contemporary, formal yet intimate.
This multigenerational story of a privileged family’s vacations on Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay is as much about the place as the people.
In 1942, wheelchair-bound insurance executive Mr. Porter (shades of FDR), his stoic wife, three daughters—beloved oldest son Charlie is off training to be a pilot—and gardening expert mother, along with assorted staff, are one of the few families summering at Ashaunt Point, where an Army base has been temporarily set up nearby. Graver (Awake, 2004, etc.) introduces the family members, particularly the bright, slightly rebellious 16-year-old Helen, in sharp, nuanced sketches while focusing on Bea, the family’s Scottish nursemaid, who is devoted to youngest daughter, Jane. After the first true romance of her life, 34-year-old Bea turns down a soldier’s marriage proposal in order to remain with the Porters. By 1947, Helen takes the story’s center stage. Studying abroad, newly in love with ideas and a man, she writes reflective but girlishly innocent letters home. By the ’60s, when Hurricane Donna hits Ashaunt, all three sisters have married. While Jane seems conventionally happy and middle sister Dossy suffers from bouts of clinical depression, Helen is still trying to find her way. Pregnant with her fourth child while enrolled in graduate school, she feels torn between love of family and growing intellectual ambitions. A decade later, Helen’s troubled oldest son, Charlie, named after the uncle who was killed in World War II and always Helen’s favorite, moves into a cabin on the peninsula, which he finds threatened by encroaching development. Helen and Charlie’s difficult but enduring mother-son relationship is particularly moving, but every character is given his/her emotional due. As one generation passes to the next, Ashaunt Point remains the gently wild refuge where the Porters can most be themselves.
A lovely family portrait: elegiac yet contemporary, formal yet intimate.Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-218484-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2018
A tour de force.
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New York Times Bestseller
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
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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