A creatively embellished, if uneven, tale of an Irish family’s odyssey.
This debut historical novel charts an Irish family’s passage to America during the Great Famine.
In 1848, the Bodkin family set sail from Galway, Ireland, to New York City on a ship named the Cushlamachree. Reflecting on his family history, the author remarks that his book “relates what I have imagined about the Bodkins’ lives between 1848 and 1902, sewn together with places, names, and dates I have found to be factual.” The story opens with Martin, age “sixty-plus-six,” recalling his family’s life in Briarhill, a Galway “townland,” prior to the clan’s immigration. The narrative then switches to Dominic, Martin’s brother, an esteemed doctor and first-class passenger on his return voyage to America in 1894. Bodkin then skips back to describe Martin, Dominic, and their siblings boarding the “coffin ship” with their parents to first set foot in the New World. The author focuses predominantly on Dominic and his medical career after he became an Army nurse during the Civil War and Martin, a veteran of the same campaign who finds works as an ironmonger in Brooklyn. The tale describes the family navigating trauma and prejudice to find a foothold in America. Bodkin delights in capturing the atmosphere of a location and establishing a strong sense of place. Describing summer in Brooklyn, he notes: “Boys played games in the streets without shirts; mothers sat in the shade, waving fans near their faces; businessmen walking to and from offices took off their jackets.” The author also introduces meticulously detailed characters, creating a rich backstory for each. The tale of Nora Jones, who as a child is found in a curragh alongside her dead father and travels to America with the Bodkins, is particularly stirring. But while substantial background information is offered for female characters, the emphasis remains on male achievement. The narrative would have benefited from stronger, more believable female voices. In addition, Bodkin’s dialogue is often too on the nose, communicating facts in a dry, unrealistic manner. At one point, a character asserts: “It was only my grandfather who left for Newfoundland in 1780. As a young man, he left his parents to sail from Dublin to Newfoundland.” This novel captures the author’s family history with clarity, but sadly its flaws prevent it from truly standing out from similar titles.
A creatively embellished, if uneven, tale of an Irish family’s odyssey.Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73637-872-4
Page Count: 434
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2022
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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