An often strong story of the grieving process.
In Christie’s debutnovel, two very different people form an unlikely bond after a tragic event.
Adam Connor is a middle-aged husband and father with graying hair and a lackluster job. When he sees a car wrecked on the side of the highway on Christmas morning, he feels compelled to stop and help the people inside—an intuitive decision that will change the course of his life. When 28-year-old Addie Harris wakes up a week later, she’s told that her husband, who was in the car with her, is dead and that a good Samaritan gave her CPR and saved her life. After she recovers, she decides to try to find the person who helped her in order to get closure and try to move on. Christie’s novel effectively highlights the different coping mechanisms Adam and Addie use after the traumatic event; Adam, who never had a drink in his life before the accident, develops alcoholism, and Addie, who’d been monogamous for many years, seeks solace in casual sex. This novel deals with how the characters move through the stages of grief, from denial to acceptance. But will they ever be able to forgive themselves? Christie’s tale features some generic components of mysteries and thrillers, but its plot offers several surprising twists. Its main theme, however, is how one copes with tragedy and learns how to live again, as shown in Adam and Addie’s separate arcs. They’re not always likable people, and although they have their flaws, Christie manages to make them both sympathetic. The text jumps between the main players’ third-person perspectives and also provides insight into secondary characters along the way. It’s not always satisfying in its characterization, though; one character close to Addie, for instance, starts out as a villain and seems to grow into a better person later on––only to become a villain again. This narrative choice has the effect of inhibiting Addie’s progress as well, as she’s never given the chance to forgive or even understand this person.
An often strong story of the grieving process.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9862898-7-3
Page Count: 413
Publisher: Gracehill Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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