A disappointing follow-up to Koen's much hoopla'd debut, Through a Glass Darkly (1986). Here, the historical detail weighs down and muddles far more than it enriches. Beautiful Barbara Montgeoffry, otherwise known as widowed Countess Devane, is back, and this time she's taking America by storm. Set in the 1720s, this complicated blend of fact and fancy has Barbara, with longtime servants ThÇräse and Hyacinthe, land in colonial Virginia, where she's been sent to assess her grandmother's newly acquired tobacco plantation—and to escape unwanted suitors at home. Though still in mourning-black, the irrepressible countess wastes no time in lining up other admirers, including wise and elderly Colonel Perry and the dashing sea captain Klaus von Rothbach. While Barbara (now 20) is duly horrified by the rustic conditions of her temporary homeland, the evils of slavery, and the difficulty of running a working plantation, all is not well at home, where a Jacobite plot wreaks havoc on the House of Hanover and on the loved ones (and not so loved) she's left behind: her grandmother, the Duchess of Tamworth; a best friend and mother of three, Jane Cromwell; favorite cousin and former suitor Tony; and conniving mother Diana, who's started an affair with Charles, Barbara's own lover before she set sail for the New World. After much strife, Barbara finally returns to England, quickly becomes again the toast of the town (and of the king), then is forced to deal head-on with mixed loyalties and a potentially destructive affair with Laurence Slane, a spy for James III and a major player in the fight to put him on the throne. Koen's two storylines—Barbara's life in Virginia and the political upheaval in England—don't mesh well, while her heroine remains unconvincingly high-spirited throughout. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-394-56929-6
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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