A cleareyed view of the sharp, difficult choices facing women on the cusp of equality.
In 1935, as women in America strive for the rights to work, to vote, and to lead independent lives, a Jewish mother and daughter face unwanted pregnancies.
In her debut novel, Brown deftly sketches the historical context of two Lower East Side women’s domestic tribulations, alternating between their stories, reflecting upon the social consequences faced by women in different generations. A familiar nausea dismays Rose, who thought she was finished with childbearing. Who will take care of Izzy, Alfie, and Eugene, not to mention her husband, Ben? Her eldest, Dottie, has always been a second mother to the younger boys. But Dottie could be a working girl. She’s a whiz with numbers and could even go to accounting school someday with the money Rose has squirreled away. Yet Dottie, just promoted to head bookkeeper at Dover Insurance, feels her own dress growing ever tighter. She can’t ignore the signs of pregnancy, which will throw a real wrench into her plans to marry Abe Rabinowitz, her devout and devoted boyfriend. If only Abe hadn’t been so devout, he might have accompanied her to Camp Eden 12 weeks ago, and she might not have found herself in the arms of another man. Things clearly went too far, and now she faces the challenge of seducing Abe, pushing for a quick marriage, and convincing him the child is his. But Abe isn’t cooperating. Will Dottie let Rose arrange an illegal abortion for her? Or will Dottie return to the arms of Willie Klein, the handsome journalist? Willie, however, has a wandering eye, and his career aspirations include traveling to Europe, despite the rising threat of war. Or will Rose find another way to save her daughter’s future?
A cleareyed view of the sharp, difficult choices facing women on the cusp of equality.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-47712-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: New American Library
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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