Dramatic, yes, but also a thoughtfully written and ultimately uplifting celebration of families that are not bound by blood...
Char Hawthorn is faced with a terrible dilemma when her husband dies, leaving his ex-wife to decide whether or not Char will continue raising her teenage stepdaughter on her own.
Career-driven Lindy says she wants Allie but won’t make the time for her, while Char thinks Allie would be better off finishing out the school year at home but fears backlash from Lindy if she says so. Timmer's (Five Days Left, 2014) realistic dialogue and dark thoughts underscore the complicated emotions that govern blended families: “If you were Char, you worried you were trying too hard, making your stepdaughter (and her mother) suspect you were gunning for someone else’s job.” Char’s strategy to play it safe soon backfires, and the unspoken custody battle waged between the two mothers becomes a tragedy of manners that causes Allie to fill the silence by acting out. For Char to be untethered from her husband and child would be life-changing on its own, but her story sharply segues into that of the 10-year-old girl that Allie tutors, Morgan Crew, who was plucked from a series of foster homes and raised by a couple whose son has special needs. When Morgan disappears, Allie takes the law into her own hands with devastating consequences. How Char, Lindy, and Morgan’s parents handle the problem from there will leave readers with much to discuss about parental responsibility. While Char is likable, she has serious flaws that turn what at first seems to be a win-win situation into a morally ambiguous one—and the tension supplies plenty of fuel for late-night reading.
Dramatic, yes, but also a thoughtfully written and ultimately uplifting celebration of families that are not bound by blood or by law but by love.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17627-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As vivid and moving as the novel is, it’s not because Haslett strives to surprise but because he’s so mindful and expressive...
This touching chronicle of love and pain traces half a century in a family of five from the parents’ engagement in 1963 through a father’s and son’s psychological torments and a final crisis.
Something has happened to Michael in the opening pages, which are told in the voice of his brother, Alec. The next chapter is narrated by Margaret, the mother of Michael, 12, Celia, 10, and Alec, 7, and the wife of John, as they prepare for a vacation in Maine. Soon, a flashback reveals that shortly before John and Margaret were to wed, she learned of his periodic mental illness, a “sort of hibernation” in which “the mind closes down.” She marries him anyway and comes to worry about the recurrence of his hibernations—which exacerbate their constant money problems—only to witness Michael bearing the awful legacy. Each chapter is told by one of the family’s five voices, shifting the point of view on shared troubles, showing how they grow away from one another without losing touch, how they cope with the loss of John and the challenge of Michael. Haslett (Union Atlantic, 2009, etc.) shapes these characters with such sympathy, detail, and skill that reading about them is akin to living among them. The portrait of Michael stands out: a clever, winning youth who becomes a kind of scholar of contemporary music with an empathy for black history and a wretched dependence on Klonopin and many other drugs to keep his anxiety at bay, to glimpse a “world unfettered by dread.”
As vivid and moving as the novel is, it’s not because Haslett strives to surprise but because he’s so mindful and expressive of how much precious life there is in both normalcy and anguish.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-26135-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A quick read to get you in the holiday mood, but not as strong as Hilderbrand’s best.
Hilderbrand leaves the beach for this Christmas novel—though it’s still set on her beloved Nantucket.
The whole island is looking forward to the annual Winter Street Inn Christmas party, except for the inn’s owner, Kelley Quinn, who's just discovered the hired Santa kissing his wife, Mitzi. Mitzi and Santa inform Kelley of their 13-year affair and Mitzi’s imminent departure from married life. Kelley, retreating to bed with smokes and booze, blasts Mitzi on Facebook and lists the inn for sale, its extravagant restoration having eaten through his once-sizable savings. Thankfully, he has grown children to help, though they have problems, too. Eldest son Patrick lives in Boston with his wife and kids, but the feds will soon be at the door to charge him with insider trading. Bartender Kevin, whose life was derailed by a bad woman, is now on track: He’s in love with Isabelle, the Winter Street Inn’s beautiful French manager. If only he can muster the courage to pop the question. And finally there’s Ava, a schoolteacher with the perfect boyfriend, except that he’s really not that into her. But Assistant Principal Scott is. Perhaps the only one who can tie up all these loose ends is Margaret Quinn, Kelley’s first wife and mother to the three kids, who sacrificed her family life in order to become the most famous journalist in America but whose arrival on Nantucket just may save the day. Increasingly, best-selling authors are producing Christmas novels, family dramas in which the Christmas Spirit prevails. They often seem like rushed marketing ploys, though occasionally they hold up to the author’s own standards. Hilderbrand’s falls somewhere in between; her skill at creating character is present, but the plot feels constrained and a little predictable.
A quick read to get you in the holiday mood, but not as strong as Hilderbrand’s best.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-37611-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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