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THE END

The flair and wit of Torres’ writing does not allay the unpleasant aftertaste left by this unforgiving portrait of men at...

In this harsh first novel by a Brazilian actress, five elderly men reflect on their friendships with each other and their exhaustive love lives.

It gives nothing away to explain that all five—Álvaro, Sílvio, Ribeiro, Neto, Ciro—die; Torres structures her book around each man’s dying narration. Walking home for the last time, in 2014, 85-year-old Álvaro is bitter, misogynistic, and highly critical of his already dead friends. Glad to be done with sex, he recalls the unpleasant half-baked orgy Sílvio held before leaving Rio years earlier. Each man will remember this orgy in a tellingly different way that highlights his character. Lying helpless on a sidewalk at age 66 in 2009, banker Sílvio admits the orgy was a phony farewell. He never really left Rio, merely transferred to a different bank branch to avoid his friends. If Álvaro is a cold fish, Sílvio is a crude, selfish sensualist. Dumping his wife, he carries on an obsessive, tawdry affair with a young bisexual woman who happens to be Ribeiro’s girlfriend. After Sílvio’s death, from Parkinson’s combined with recreational drug use, his son runs an ad apologizing for Sílvio’s years of bad behavior and inviting others to celebrate his death. Ribeiro and Neto are outliers. Rebeiro, who suffers a heart attack after taking Viagra at age 83, is the group’s only bachelor but has always secretly loved Ciro’s wife, Ruth. Half black, Neto has lived under pressures his friends would never understand. A decent man, he dies in 1992, one year after his wife of over 30 years. Everyone admires handsome, intelligent, passionate Ciro, but he commits an unforgivable act of cruelty against Ruth. When Álvaro asks if the fast-growing cancer that strikes 50-year-old Ciro in 1990 is God’s punishment, Ciro implies that he hopes so. So will readers.

The flair and wit of Torres’ writing does not allay the unpleasant aftertaste left by this unforgiving portrait of men at their worst.

Pub Date: July 11, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-63206-121-8

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Restless Books

Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017

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REGRETTING YOU

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

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THE NIGHTINGALE

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

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