Stuart’s debut novel is a charming and timely tale of learning to connect in the digital age.
A father discovers that the foundation of his relationship with his son is paved in pixelated blocks.
Alex isn’t sure his marriage will be able to survive his 8-year-old son Sam’s diagnosis of autism. Frustrated by Sam’s frequent outbursts and tantrums, as well as his growing list of social anxieties and quirks, Alex decides to take a break from his chaotic home and shaky marriage; armed with a duffel bag stuffed with his belongings, he'll be crashing at his old friend Dan’s apartment indefinitely. Soon after the separation, Alex loses his job, sending his life further into a tailspin. Though Alex clearly loves his son, he has trouble finding ways to relate to him. When Sam becomes obsessed with the popular video game “Minecraft,” Alex is initially skeptical, worried that having an Xbox in his bedroom will only cause Sam to retreat further into himself. Eventually, though, the two begin playing the game together, and Alex too begins to obsess over it, realizing that instead of driving Sam inward, it is actually helping his development. Every obstacle in life now has an in-game counterpart, an extended metaphor to help Sam cope with frightening dogs, loud noises, and cruel peers. As they work together to build a castle within the game, Sam begins to open up to his father, sharing parts of himself that Alex never thought he’d be able to access. And as much as young Sam is growing and evolving throughout the novel, so is Alex, who lets go of some childhood trauma, dreams of a new future for himself, and explores the possibility of rekindling his relationship with his wife, Jody. The characters are well-developed and vulnerable, learning to navigate and make sense of a world filled with obstacles.
Stuart’s debut novel is a charming and timely tale of learning to connect in the digital age.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-11159-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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 tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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