A strange and frustratingly far-fetched story.
In Anker’s series starter, the fates of two families collide in South Dakota.
Ramsey Wade’s parents died in 1974, when he was 4 years old, and ever since, he’s lived a nomadic existence, governed by his brother Carl, who’s 11 years his senior. Carl is brilliant—he reads and writes constantly, has some kind of publishing career, and speaks multiple languages—and he’s acted as a tutor to Ramsey, who’s never attended school. Ramsey is also an intellectual prodigy—advanced beyond his years in most academic subjects and virtuosic with a violin. However, Carl is mentally ill; he slips without warning from one distinct personality to another, including some that are brutally violent. Ramsey has a hard time adjusting to school life, as his genius alienates him from others, as does his lack of mundane experience—a point that Anker (Brothers, Part III—Spring, 2018, etc.) doggedly hammers home. (At 14 years old, for example, Ramsey has never encountered spaghetti.) In orchestra class, Ramsey befriends Jeff Lofton, whose family circumstances are implausibly similar to Ramsey’s: He was raised by his older brother, John, in the aftermath of his own parents’ premature deaths. Jeff is also something of a social outcast—talented but socially clumsy. The two quickly become friends, and Ramsey finds it increasingly difficult to conceal signs of abuse and neglect as Carl spirals deeper into madness. Anker’s tale has the feel of a fairy tale for teens: imaginatively inventive and dramatic but squarely implausible. She ably braids multiple storylines and a considerable cast of characters into a single, novelistic tapestry, and there’s hardly a lull in the fast-paced plot. However, it’s never clear who the intended audience is; the principal themes can be disquietingly grim, while the lightweight prose seems directed to readers in their early teens. Also, the story expresses a peculiar fascination with corporal punishment; John frequently spanks his teenage brothers, and the school’s vice principal does so to students, as well. In what American high school does an administrator physically discipline students in this day and age?
A strange and frustratingly far-fetched story.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-979737-56-2
Page Count: 302
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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