An enjoyable, contemplative drive through Middle America and middle age.
In Murray’s debut literary novel, a middle-aged drifter searches for her brother and finds herself.
Isabel “Izzy” O’Hara is a sad woman, and not just because she’s been recently diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and seasonal affective disorder. It’s because she can’t seem to feel at home anywhere, no matter how hard she tries. She loses numerous jobs, turns down a government position, and later believes that government operatives are following her. She receives charity from her distant parents and her more successful friends; her eyesight is failing her, and she doesn’t know why; and worst of all, she misses her brother Tommy, whom she hasn’t seen since he ran away from home 20 years ago. After she’s fired from yet another dull job, Izzy sets off on a journey to find Tommy and begin repairing her dysfunctional family. Along the way, she falls in love with a rockabilly singer who reminds her of her brother, changes her identity, and keeps up a steady drinking habit while searching for a new career. She finds comfort from her mother and her mysteriously ever present friend, Greer, and eventually begins to make peace with her turbulent past. From the first page, the book is full of beautiful descriptions: “It is the vortex of winter, and in Nellie’s Escort, I trundle across interstate I-80,” the book begins. From there, the story moves slowly between Izzy’s internal musings, vivid flashbacks to her childhood, and plenty of rock ’n’ roll song lyrics. Anyone looking for an action-packed adventure story will be disappointed, but those who want to read a thoughtful, character-driven study of aging, family, and the ups and downs of life will likely fall in love—especially if they’re also fans of the Midwest and rock music. The narrative switches between past and present tenses as often as it shifts between past and present events, but not always at the same time, which gets confusing; it also suffers from frequent, though minor, typos. But these are just small bumps on an otherwise smooth road.
An enjoyable, contemplative drive through Middle America and middle age.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-365-38129-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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