A clunky, awkward examination of abuse, infidelity, and illness.
In Crickmore’s debut novel, a woman experiences traumas from childhood into adulthood.
By 1980, Maria Anderson was a famous lawyer who defended children in family disputes. She chose these types of cases due to the problems she encountered during her own childhood. When she was a young girl, her father died, and her mother Brenda befriended a neighbor named Maureen whose own husband had left her. It was a fateful friendship that connected Maria with Maureen’s daughter, Emilia, who used to help to lure young girls to her older, abusive cousin Tyler Staples. Maria grew to believe that she loved Tyler, but she managed to escape the toxic relationship. Now, as a successful lawyer, Maria is married to a wonderful man named Ronald Makintosh and has children of her own. But on their wedding anniversary, Maria receives word that Tyler has died, which brings back a flood of memories, confusing emotions, and paranoia. Meanwhile, a beautiful nurse has moved into the neighborhood, and Maria notices a sharp change in her husband’s behavior. This leads her to hire a private investigator, which embroils her in an entirely new family trauma. The true test for Maria and her marriage, however, comes after a later, troubling diagnosis. Crickmore has crafted an ambitious family saga that touches on a range of difficult issues. But although it has many potentially intriguing elements, it has pacing problems that keep it from coming together as a cohesive whole. The third-person narration veers from describing every event as it happens to summarizing major plot turns in a few sentences. For example, Emilia, a major character, essentially disappears from the story early on, with the only explanation being that she “drifted into cannabis use and a slow mental decline.” Because of this tendency, the book never has a clear, consistent pace, resulting in a confusing timeline; it’s also never made clear how readers are supposed to feel about many of the characters. This is unfortunate, as the heavy subject matter could have used an anchoring emotional guide.
A clunky, awkward examination of abuse, infidelity, and illness.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5462-8867-1
Page Count: 194
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2018
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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