This story of a complicated man makes for compelling, if often frustrating, reading.
A patriarch’s actions have a lasting impact on his family in Jaramillo’s multigenerational saga.
The titular character is a complex man who has been treated badly by life: When the novel opens, broken-down World War I veteran Carlos, working as a lumberman, is being mocked by his younger co-workers (“Lookit what I am making for the old man. Carlos needs his cane to walk”). The one bright spot in Carlos’ life is his decades-younger wife, Felipa. But she is having an affair with his boss and friend, Pifanio, and becomes pregnant with his child. Felipa isn’t ready to be a mother, and Carlos convinces her to give up the baby, Bruna, to Lena, his daughter with Mara, his late first wife and the love of his life. Later, when Felipa leaves to stalk Lena and Bruna, Carlos stops working and drinks himself into a stupor. Accustomed to being his family’s provider through the years, Carlos struggles to find a new direction in life. As Carlos and Felipa fade into the background, Lena, along with her partner, Jeri, her daughter, Bruna, and Bruna’s son, Manito, take over the book’s narration. It becomes exceedingly clear how the difficult legacy of Carlos has been passed on to his flawed descendants. It takes too long for Carlos to evolve into a sympathetic character—this is because the author uses a flashback-laden structure to illustrate how Carlos and the other primary characters ended up being how they are. It’s a dizzying experience for the reader, as a character can go from old to young and back again within the same section of the text; a more conventionally chronologically structured narrative would certainly have been more reader friendly. The primary characters (Carlos, Felipa, Lena, and Bruna) are memorable, and eventually become comprehensible. Supporting cast members appear, barely long enough to register, then disappear, never to be seen again. Still, the impression Carlos made on those around him during his long, colorful life remains vividly evident throughout.
This story of a complicated man makes for compelling, if often frustrating, reading.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781733194983
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Twelve Winters Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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