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SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE

Name: SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
Author: John Rolfe Gardiner
ISBN: 0-375-40740-5

by John Rolfe Gardiner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 1999

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By Gardiner (In the Heart of the Whole World, 1988, etc.), a complex, often startling tale about the nature of loyalty (to family, to the state, to an ideal) and on medicine’s struggle to master disease. In France, at the end of WWI, Major William Lloyd, a bright, energetic, progressive doctor, struggles to run a hospital for Allied wounded. The supply officer, however, is blithely corrupt, siphoning off money and the best food for himself and his cronies. Lloyd finds an unlikely ally in a taciturn French nurse, Jeanne, who has remarkable skill at tending men and a shrewd eye for diagnosing the many ills set in motion by wounds or disease. Gradually, Lloyd discovers that she is, in fact, an extraordinarily gifted, and obsessed, medical researcher who has worked for Louis Pasteur and has created serums that may actually control the infections raging among the wounded. Lloyd finds himself falling in love with Jeanne, and matters grow more complex when his eldest son, William, is drafted. An opponent of the war, son William runs afoul of authority when he’s shipped off to Europe. Arrested for his outspoken pacifism, he falls ill in a French prison and ends up in his father’s hospital, close to death. One of Jeanne’s serums might save him, but can Lloyd bring himself to experiment on his son? And, the war over, can he part from Jeanne? Gardiner’s character portraits are penetrating, as is his dissection of William’s agony over his divided loyalties. But Jeanne remains an unlikely figure, part mystic, part driven scientist. And William’s passion is baffling. Indeed, many of the characters are lucid in their thoughts but enigmatic in their actions, and the ending, unfortunately, seems both abrupt and too relentlessly downbeat, as if the author were trying too hard to assign fortunes and fates. Yet the portrait of wartime France is convincing, and Gardiner’s meditations on the obligations of medicine and on the nature of familial love remain original and moving.

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1999

ISBN: 0-375-40740-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
NORTH OF ORDINARY
by John Rolfe Gardiner ; illustrated by Maria Nicklin

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MAGELLAN HOUSE
by John Rolfe Gardiner

- BOOK REVIEW
DOUBLE STITCH
by John Rolfe Gardiner

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THE GRAPES OF WRATH

by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 1939

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This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.

Pub Date: April 14, 1939

ISBN: 0143039431

Page Count: 532

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
STEINBECK IN VIETNAM
by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden

- BOOK REVIEW
STEINBECK
by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICA AND AMERICANS
by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson

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SUMMER SECRETS

by Jane Green ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 2015

As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends,...

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Before sobriety, Catherine "Cat" Coombs had it all: fun friends, an exciting job, and a love affair with alcohol. Until she blacked out one more time and woke up in a stranger’s bed.

By that time, “having it all” had already devolved into hiding the extent of her drinking from everyone she cared about, including herself. Luckily for Cat, the stranger turned out to be Jason Halliwell, a rather delicious television director marking three years, eight months, and 69 days of sobriety. Inspired by Jason—or rather, inspired by the prospect of a romantic relationship with this handsome hunk—Cat joins him at AA meetings and embarks on her own journey toward clarity. But sobriety won’t work until Cat commits to it for herself. Their relationship is tumultuous, as Cat falls off the wagon time and again. Along the way, Cat discovers that the cold man she grew up endlessly failing to please was not her real father, and with his death, her mother’s secret escapes. So she heads for Nantucket, where she meets her drunken dad and two half sisters—one boisterously welcoming and the other sulkily suspicious—and where she commits an unforgivable blunder. Years later, despairing of her persistent relapses, Jason has left Cat, taking their daughter with him. Finally, painfully, Cat gets clean. Green (Saving Grace, 2014, etc.) handles grim issues with a sure hand, balancing light romance with tense family drama. She unflinchingly documents Cat’s humiliations under the influence and then traces her commitment to sobriety. Simultaneously masking the motivations of those surrounding our heroine, Green sets up a surprising karmic lesson.

As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends, like addiction, may endanger her future.