Although the book is a tad sentimental, it possesses quiet grace.
A simple, melancholic tale of love, loss, grief, and friendship.
As for many artists before him—Shakespeare, Austen, Bergman—for veteran Danish author Grøndahl (An Altered Light, 2005, etc.), everything seems to come down to love, marriage, and family. This short, wistful novel, the first to be translated into English by Grøndahl himself, takes on those classic subjects through the person of Ellinor, a 70-year-old Copenhagen woman. The book’s title is from a poem by the Danish poet B.S. Ingemann: “Often I am happy and yet I want to cry.” Ellinor’s first words to us are: “Now your husband is also dead, Anna. Your husband, our husband.” Ellinor’s husband, Georg, died three weeks ago, and she feels the need to talk to someone. She picks Anna, Georg’s late first wife and her own best friend, and talks to her via a dramatic monologue which is like a long letter: “His absence felt like a lump growing inside me, making me suffocate. I never felt so alone.” She now has a companion who will listen, but “you have no ears to hear any of this.” She knows it’s “absurd” but she’s lonely, grief-stricken, and it helps comfort her. The plot is very spare. Her first husband, Henning, died 40 years ago in a skiing accident which also killed Anna. Some secrets are revealed. We learn from Ellinor that Henning had been having an affair with Anna. Ellinor then became like a stepmother to Anna’s twin sons, Stefan and Morten, and helped Georg raise them. Eventually, she and Georg married. We learn that Ellinor was an only child from an affair her mother had with a German soldier; she never knew her father. Ellinor is a meek, reserved woman living a simple life. She can get angry, bitter, and sarcastic, and this helps make her seem human as she gradually reveals herself to be a strong, courageous woman.
Although the book is a tad sentimental, it possesses quiet grace.Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7007-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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
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
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