Like most family road trips, the novel is sometimes rollicking fun, sometimes unbearably annoying; but the trip goes on too...
Kokoris (The Pursuit of Other Interests, 2009) aims to balance issue-oriented domestic drama with levity in this story about a middle-aged man who sets off in the family van for a life-changing road trip with his autistic son.
John Nichols, a 57-year-old divorced high school teacher, former college basketball player, and one-book novelist, sets off from Wilton, Illinois, in his Honda Odyssey with his 19-year-old son, Ethan. They’re heading to Charleston, South Carolina, where John’s oldest child, conservative Republican bond trader Karen, is getting married. John still pines for his ex-wife, Mary, a lawyer who kicked him out after his one foolish fall into adultery two years earlier. She shares custody of Ethan and is waiting impatiently in Charleston, annoyed that John risks missing the wedding. But given John’s heavy-duty packing and the effort he puts into Ethan’s goodbyes to his favorite places in Wilton, it's obvious that the trip is bigger than John has let on. Traveling with Ethan, who has the emotional and mental capacity of a 3-year-old, is difficult. Managing the boy's mood swings and short attention span requires lots of pit stops, lots of Cracker Barrel meals, and three talking teddy bears. Shortly after John’s middle daughter, Mindy, a successful actress, joins John and Ethan in Tennessee, she tells him that Karen’s called off her wedding. They continue on to Charleston anyway, and there, John’s secret comes out: without telling Mary, he's signed Ethan up for an unexpectedly available spot at a residential treatment center in Maine that he and Mary both liked when they visited the year before. The Nichols women are furious, but they decide to accompany John to Maine to decide what they think of the place themselves. While the miles pile up, John, Mary, and their daughters sort out what's best for Ethan and their own futures.
Like most family road trips, the novel is sometimes rollicking fun, sometimes unbearably annoying; but the trip goes on too long, and the clashes, jokes, and revelations become as repetitious and tedious as the endless pit stops and chain-restaurant meals.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-03605-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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