Lots of symbolic portent—the past, the sea, the family—and an overcomplicated narrative structure attempt to turn an...
Financial threats to a family estate in the Irish countryside abruptly leave a man and woman empty nesters without their nest.
Pretty much the entire plot of this debut novel reveals itself in the opening chapter. A mother and daughter have locked themselves into an unused ballroom in the family manor after the mother, who “had grown strange,” had yanked the daughter out of the boarding school she had just begun attending. The father tries to get them to open the door, but they ignore him. The daughter’s younger brother has died. The rest of the novel fills in the details—names, motivations, how the past has led to the present—in a manner that plays hopscotch with chronology and point of view. More than half the novel after that scene-setting intro finds chapters alternating between the perspectives (but not the voices) of father John and son Philip as the family prepares to turn its house over to the government as a tourist attraction and move to a small cottage on the grounds. John has apparently been keeping the family’s perilous financial condition (as well as a more lucrative option) a secret from his wife. Eight-year-old Philip wonders where he will play, and he hates the thought of other children touring what was his bedroom (where he will no longer be allowed). John’s chapters provide some context on the family history and that of the estate, how history seems to both repeat itself and break from the past. Then comes another long section narrated in the first person by mother Marianne, who remembers her courtship with John and her introduction to the countryside. Then a quick concluding chapter returns the novel full circle without really providing resolution. As John muses, “there had to be unsaid things between husbands and wives, and he had learnt that, though these were the things that saved you, they separated you too.”
Lots of symbolic portent—the past, the sea, the family—and an overcomplicated narrative structure attempt to turn an elemental melodrama into a novel with more literary weight.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-22883-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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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