Never a dull moment.
The Widdicombes work through a family epidemic of almost life-threatening anomie in their elaborate summer house on Bainbridge Island.
Spend a head-spinning summer with the Widdicombes and their entourage in James' gleefully over-the-top satiric debut. Carol, the lady of the house, is set on becoming a New Age Mrs. Ramsay, hosting artists and writers in the mansion she is redecorating in a "bohemian Paris meets California cool meets Pacific Northwest Casual" style, angling for a feature in a décor magazine, winning instead comparisons to a "hotel waiting room…in Liberace's cerebral cortex." Her design process relies on the principles of her New Age guru and houseguest, Gracie Sloane. "Source Energy requires imagistic fuel to do the daily work of manifesting….It is to this end we pin our hopes and dreams to our Vision Boards." Gracie is holed up at the Widdicombes’ palazzo to work on The Habit of Wildness, a book that recommends "feral romping" and "whimsical savagery." The Widdicombe patriarch is a foulmouthed former tennis pro with so little to occupy his time he is nearly suicidal, until he mines his predicament for a self-help book of his own. Son Christopher, home from Rhode Island School of Design for the summer, is suffering even more deeply than his parents as his parody landscapes turn out to be actually gorgeous, and his cruel performance piece, "Son," results in unprecedented familial closeness. As their personal assistant, Michelle, puts it, "When all the Widdicombes were in one room, united in antic chatter, [it's] as though they were playing out scenes from an old screwball comedy." Contributing to this effect are another houseguest, a drunk, pill-popping lout who pretends to be a screenwriter, and their gardener, Marvelous Matthews. The latter is a longtime disciple of Gracie Sloane who is about to see his own Vision Board really come through.
Never a dull moment.Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9961-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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