A spiritually infused homage to Australia’s diverse heritage hampered by an episodic structure.
This sequel continues the saga of the daughter of an Irish miner and an Aborigine woman in Australia.
It is 2015 and 12-year-old Lisa Maree is enjoying frolicking through the acreage of her grandparents’ Hillrock property outside the small city of Gympie in Queensland, accompanied by their border collie, Max. Hugging him, she feels Max shiver just before she hears a mournful wail: “Heartbreakingly intense, it rose and fell on the wind. It was a cry of human grief, but there was also longing and a drawn-out sigh—almost like a question.” Returning to the house, Lisa displays a pure white stone she found just before hearing the wail. Her grandmother Grace Daniels explains it is a Limga, “the Aboriginal word for any solid rock which had eternal properties.” It is on this mystical note that Roots (Marranga-Limga, 2015, etc.) sets her protagonists on a search into their long-forgotten family lineage, finally reaching back to the 1869 birth of Nika O’Reilly on the banks of the Mary River. Lisa’s Hillrock experience coincidently dovetails with the beginning of two research projects being undertaken by other 21st-century descendants of Nika and her husband, Tom Barritt—one inspired by the new grade-school teacher in Gympie interested in learning the history of the area, and the other involving an international effort to identify recently uncovered remains of World War I soldiers lost in France and Turkey. The relatively short novel has so many characters that it is difficult to keep track of them all. Fortunately, Roots provides a genealogical chart at the beginning, useful when readers become confused. The story also plays havoc with the timeline, jumping back to World War II before briefly returning to the present, and then back again to the 1940s. There’s a quick visit to the 1960s, and then a lengthy foray into the late 19th and early 20th century. It is here that the author successfully creates her most fully developed character, Nika. It is also the section richest in intriguing Gympie history and lore.
A spiritually infused homage to Australia’s diverse heritage hampered by an episodic structure.Pub Date: June 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5434-0071-7
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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