In a change of pace from her rugged 18th-century dramas dealing with love, murder and scandal (Shadows on the Shore, 1994, etc.), Stirling returns to more peaceful domestic doings—this time in a tale of love and marriage within a Glasgow family circa 1930. When Maeve Burnside—wife of workingman Alex, mother of four grown sons and studious Alison (16)- -suddenly dies, children and husband grieve deeply. But hard times and layoffs are in the wind, and all soon rally for crises. Must Alison give up her dreams of a career, leave school, and care for Dad and the boys? Tough old Grandmother Gilfillan lectures her on Duty, but Alison and father Alex stand their ground. (Much later Grandmother's iron will turn out to be golden). Jim Abbott, one-armed war veteran and local schoolteacher, will guide Alison on to academic glory while smothering his love and desire for her. Meantime, eldest Burnside son Henry, writing for a radical journal (with tongue in cheek), loves a married, German beauty, Trudi, and procures not only her freedom but a job for himself on a major newspaper. Jack, the trumpet player, blasts along in jazz bands, and prim Bertie discovers—and evades censure for—his closet proclivities. (Not much is heard about Davy, but he's sure to be ``jake.'') Then there's Alex, now an out-of-work loller and consumer of Trudi's cuisine, until Trudi and widowed Ruby, a neighbor and barmaid, conspire to drop the marital net. It all ends with a bang-up wedding and—surprisingly, considering the initially mellow tone—a judicious, diminished-seventh coda to the mutual love of Alison and teacher Jim. For Anglophiles whose affections reach to the River Clyde: another likable family tale with Stirling's trademark amusing asides—a special treat here is her portrait of a celebrated ``Celtic Bard'' soused to the ears and a-croon in Gaelic.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13143-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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