Ultimately, Mrs. Saint turns her neighbor’s guilt trip into an uplifting journey to interdependence—one that will leave...
A disgraced socialite unwittingly joins a community of “defectives” when she rents a bungalow next to a meddling woman with a French accent and a secret past.
Ashamed of her ex-husband’s affair and financial failure, Markie tries to start a quiet life reviewing insurance claims from her home office to escape the scrutiny of her former friends and neighbors. But her new home, in addition to being less glamorous than the one she left, is not the sanctuary she was hoping for. Her new neighbor Angeline St. Denis—“But you will call me ‘Mrs. Saint’ if you are not prepared to pronounce ‘Denis’ correctly”—has other plans for her time. Before long, Markie and her teenage son, Jesse, are roped into helping Mrs. Saint’s many domestic employees, whom she refers to as “defectives,” with everything from babysitting to yardwork, and it’s unclear whether they are really defective or if Mrs. Saint’s meaning is lost in translation—all Markie knows is that Mrs. Saint is infuriatingly intrusive. She’s constantly turning up uninvited to offer a home-cooked meal, good advice, and help with home repairs just when Markie needs them most. The nerve! But Timmer (Untethered, 2016, etc.) inserts a sly dose of reality into this adult fantasy. Markie’s fractured relationship with her controlling and disapproving parents has left her wary of people who meddle, and she knows she's partly to blame for allowing her irresponsible, cheating husband to ruin both their lives while she looked the other way. So every time Mrs. Saint dodges a personal question or refuses to explain why she wants Markie to help a neighbor with a particular task, Markie feels justified in keeping her distance. But is she really? Together, the so-called defectives, who include a little girl, her troubled mother and grandmother, an elderly handyman, and an absent-minded cook, seem to form a functioning community of helpful neighbors who look out for Mrs. Saint as well as she looks out for them. Where Markie fits into the neighborhood is the question of the story, and its answer is thoughtful and bittersweet.
Ultimately, Mrs. Saint turns her neighbor’s guilt trip into an uplifting journey to interdependence—one that will leave readers ready to move next door.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4778-1996-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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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