An increasingly gripping story of danger and defiant hope on the Cornish coast.
George’s historical Gothic novel takes place on the coast of 19th-century Cornwall.
In the first of her series of novels “guided by the brushstrokes of history recorded by [artist] Frank Bramley,” the author centers her story on beautiful young Effy Pengelly, who lives in the small Cornish fishing village of Port Quin in 1841. Effy’s mother Mary, her father Jago, her brothers Richard and Taran (both farm laborers), and her friends Kensa and Melwynn all fit in seamlessly with the workaday world of Port Quin, but Effy is different. Not only does she yearn for more out of her life (she assists the village’s doctor two days a week in his surgery), she has also inherited a supernatural ability from her grandmother: She sees visions and occasionally has premonitions. Also distinct from the rest of Port Quin society is William Carlyon, a stranger who moved to the village less than a year ago and is said to come from a family of pirates and smugglers. Effy feels an attraction to William, though she herself is the object of affection for another young man—handsome fisherman Caden Bolitho, who often walks her to church and seems intent on winning her hand in marriage. A series of events complicates the situation: Effy sees her own father fornicating with Cornelia Hawkins, the “tawny haired, pretty but sullen, buxom grain miller’s daughter,” who is later abducted and found badly beaten, her assailant at first unknown. Then a massive storm strikes Port Quin, devastating the fishing fleet upon which the town depends, and it seems to take the life of William Carlyon, though Effy immediately wonders if Caden was involved in William’s disappearance and questions whether or not William is even really dead.
George’s book is attractively designed and well-paced, drawing readers immediately into Effy’s struggles with both her own desires and her mysterious powers. She gradually emerges as a source of strength for all of the narrative’s characters, who are struggling with what the author succinctly refers to as “this rugged life”; her growing resourcefulness is the most inviting aspect of the story. George tends to load that story with overwritten passages like, “The wind whistled mournfully through the open windows of several homes and doors creaked and gently rapped open and shut in the breeze,” but she’s also capable of lovely turns of phrase (“the vast grumbling moors”; “eerie shadows upon the timeworn walls”). The author skillfully juxtaposes the very human evil of some characters with the impersonal threat of the elements, against which Port Quin continuously struggles, as symbolized by the enormous storm at the heart of the book. “The mammoth storm had created a hopeless dawn for many that morning,” readers learn. “Without enough men in the village, the women would teeter precariously on the edge of starvation and poverty.” The knife-edge of survival is dramatically conveyed throughout the story, providing an appropriately grim backdrop for the difficult human dramas Effy must navigate, including her disillusionment with her father, her growing trepidation about Caden, and her role in the future of her village.
An increasingly gripping story of danger and defiant hope on the Cornish coast.Pub Date: May 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798988630746
Page Count: 318
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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