A heartwarming novel that respects grief and honors the special bond between a grandparent and grandchild.
Moore (Time’s Tyranny, 2017, etc.), a winner of an Independent Publisher Book Award, delivers a story about grief, family bonds, and the transformative power of love.
Tilda Carr has long had difficulty sleeping, but one night, she finally has her first restful slumber in months—only to wake up a widow. Her 40-year marriage ends with her husband Harold’s sudden death in his sleep, and she’s left reeling. She and her daughter, Laura, make an oath to get through the five stages of grief before Harold’s yahrzeit—the one-year anniversary of his death. However, the coming year has more in store for them than they realize. Tilda’s granddaughter, Tilly, hides her pain at her beloved grandfather’s passing as well as another, secret struggle that she barely understands herself. Tilda’s attempts to reach out to her are well-intentioned but clumsy at first and fraught with common, generational misunderstandings. To make matters worse, she also takes on the emotional burden of a neighbor and his daughter, whose mother left them to start a new life. Tilda struggles to be a good friend, a good mother and grandmother, and a woman navigating a life without her own best friend. This is an intimate look into the aftermath of spousal death that offers poignant observations on how grief can hide around every corner—in scents, in songs, in strangers. Tilda is so consumed by her loss that she closes herself off emotionally and doesn’t allow herself to move forward. When she gets an offer to go on a trip with a male friend who could turn into a romantic partner, her negative reaction captures how one can be unwilling to betray one’s grief with happiness. The novel also shows how Tilda fails to hear a loved one’s quiet pleas for help. As the protagonist begins to heal, she realizes how vital it is to cherish one’s relatives and how important it is to listen with an open, accepting heart.
A heartwarming novel that respects grief and honors the special bond between a grandparent and grandchild.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-477-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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