Whether you love him or hate him, this novel is just what you’re expecting from McInerney. So he must be doing it on purpose.
McInerney returns to Russell and Corrine Calloway, the protagonists of his last two novels—call it The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Fancy Pants, Volume III: The Cialis Years.
" 'This is lily paste dumpling wrap around foie gras. And this is twenty-four-karat gold leaf,' the waiter [said], dusting each of the dumplings as Russell watched his wife’s expression grow incredulous. 'And this,' he said, sprinkling what looked like bacon bits over Corrine’s plate, 'crushed quail skull.' " It really doesn’t make much difference what it is — the women in this book eat almost nothing. Except for Corrine’s daughter, the precocious Storey Calloway, twin of Jeremy. One of the many things to dislike about Corrine in this, her third incarnation, is that she's so concerned by her 11-year-old daughter’s interest in food. “At breakfast she wants to know what’s for lunch, and at lunch she asks about dinner. And she’s started to watch that damn Food Network.” Finally, thank God, she starts to starve herself like everyone else. Corrine was the moral compass of her set in Brightness Falls (1992). In The Good Life (2006), she found love at a soup kitchen in the ruins of the World Trade Center. Now that love interest is back on the scene, and she resumes her adulterous affair with surprising ease, partly influenced by her truly appalling best friend, Casey. Russell’s career in publishing is a mess, cocaine is back—“it’s not like [it] ever went away,” one character explains—and the “jitney” to the Hamptons is really just a bus with a fancy name. After a long, draggy midsection, the end of this novel kicks into high gear, with a torrent of personal crises, the financial crash, and the Obama election, though a gun pulled out in an early act never goes off. Isn’t that against the rules? So is this dialogue, or at least it should be: “Oh, Russell, is this it? Roses once a year and maybe an obligatory drunken fuck? We’re fifty years old. Where’s the romance?”
Whether you love him or hate him, this novel is just what you’re expecting from McInerney. So he must be doing it on purpose.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-94800-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
PROFILES
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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