A transporting debut that deftly probes the complex nature of relationships between women.
As she deals with boredom and isolation after being uprooted to Brazil for her husband’s career, the wife of an academic forges interesting, fraught connections with two other women.
At the opening of Burnham’s debut, lapsed writer Linda is on the brink of leaving her historian husband when he learns that he has earned a visiting professorship in São Paulo. Rather than end the marriage, she travels with him, embarking on her own journey of self-discovery. Their university-provided apartment in São Paulo comes with a maid, Marta, who cooks and cleans, exacerbating Linda’s sense of purposelessness as she wanders the streets of São Paulo aimlessly or else sits at home feeling useless. Linda’s situation begins to change as she first takes up painting, finally finding a means of personal expression, and then meets Celia, a beguiling theater artist who serves as a vehicle for Linda’s self-discovery. Unfortunately, the novel falters slightly at the end; Burnham sets up Linda’s dynamic with Marta as an emotionally, socially, and socio-economically complex one that will inevitably lead to some kind of emotional breakthrough, but when it does, it feels forced and clichéd—even a little white savior–ish—and does not ring entirely true. In addition, the novel’s ambitious second-person narration becomes grating and strange at times. Nevertheless, the fact that the narrative is addressed to a man—Linda’s husband—lends it additional power, transforming it into a sort of feminist rejoinder to patriarchical dismissiveness of domestic work, a document of the unseen complexity of women’s lives, no matter how quiet. At its best, the novel is a subtle and adept character study that reveals the power of connections between women. The novel is buoyed as well by Burnham’s dreamy prose, with which she conjures memorable images of Brazil. Though the plot is not entirely coherent, specifically when it comes to the development of Linda’s relationship with Marta, the author’s psychological insight and skill in portraying the multifaceted nature of female friendship make for a compelling read.
A transporting debut that deftly probes the complex nature of relationships between women.Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984855-83-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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