A transplanted suburbanite revels in the delights of her new urban residence and experiences.
“Some people see cities as cold capitals of commerce lacking in humor or humanity.” This observation of the newly transplanted author is certainly not a sentiment that she shares. Durack’s plunge into an environment that many have fled over the past few decades is purposeful and committed. Her thoughts represent a salute to what generally makes a city great, and what makes the city of Cincinnati even greater. She “celebrate[s] the joy and the richness of the community that welcomed” her with more than 50 short stories on Cincinnati’s art, architecture, history, food, sports, festivals, performances and all the other amenities that contribute to the invigorating city feel. That feel is reinforced by the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Durack’s descriptive writing of places, events and personal interactions with residents. The author’s unpretentious, quaint observations range from Frisbee players and the marvels of old elevators to the perhaps more complex analysis on how and where Henry Ford got his ideas for assembly-line auto manufacturing. This latter example is one of a few that sometimes contrast sharply with other, more mundane reflections. This contrast sometimes makes it seem like the author could not decide on the simplicity of a 130-page pocket book or a more thoughtful examination of a culturally rich city. The chapter on surveying, for example, required a trip to the library for research, while the advice on leaving grilling to the pros is more suitable for an Internet forum. There are also enough quotes in some of the chapters to merit citations (or at least a short bibliography). The author’s attitude, however, shines on its consistent tenor of the historical grandeur of institution over individual, as in depictions of the vaunted city hall or the conviction that old, large clocks were telling us that accurate time “was less certain and more precious.” That sentiment alone might capture the soul of local readers remembering a different time in history. A breezy, cheerful collection that will appeal to locals, gentrification dwellers and those with a cursory historical interest in the city of Cincinnati.
Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
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
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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