Though it feels a bit like the literary equivalent of an after-school special for adults, Weiner does a good job of...
A 39-year-old suburban mom turns to prescription painkillers to manage the compounding stresses of her downwardly mobile existence, her troubled marriage, her difficult 5-year-old daughter and her father’s descent into Alzheimer’s-related dementia.
Allison Weiss is a blogger at a Jezebel-like site called Ladiesroom.com and is largely responsible for supporting her family as her reporter husband’s salary shrinks in the wake of the implosion of the newspaper industry. Certain aspects of Allison’s writing career mirror facets of Weiner’s (The Next Best Thing, 2012, etc.) own public battles against sexism in the media and publishing industries. Allison wonders whether or not to use the term “strident” to describe another woman, and after her picture appears in a Wall Street Journal article, the comments sections is barraged by disparaging remarks about her weight and appearance. Unhappy in the large house in an upscale Philadelphia suburb chosen by her husband, Allison develops a pill problem, starting with pain meds prescribed for a bad back. Before she knows it, she's juggling several doctors to feed her habit, requiring larger and larger doses, and eventually turning to an illegal website to place her orders. Weiner manages to postpone the inevitable train wreck for a few hundred pages, as Allison dismisses and denies her addiction, comparing herself favorably to stereotypical junkies, whose lives are so different from her upscale Whole Foods and private-school existence that she can pretend there is no connection. Weiner relies on brand names as class signifiers; the other moms at her daughter’s school wear Lululemon workout clothes, Seven for All Mankind jeans, and carry Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bags. Even after entering rehab, Allison’s denial of her problem and inability to identify with lower-class addicts from broken homes carries on for another hundred pages or so before the inevitable revelations set in.
Though it feels a bit like the literary equivalent of an after-school special for adults, Weiner does a good job of describing the mindset of the addict and provides a realistic portrayal of upper-middle-class addiction in a novel that will appeal to her many fans.Pub Date: June 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1778-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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