An often vivid portrait of a conflicted mother, although her struggle eventually becomes tedious.
Debut author Sokol offers a novel about one woman’s obsession with motherhood.
Lara Jennings James is a woman who knows what she wants. As a driven member of a public relations and marketing firm in Richmond, Virginia, Lara has devoted countless hours to her career and personal success. She and her husband, Will, seem to be the epitome of a happy, childless couple, taking trips abroad, attending an annual wine festival, and immersing themselves in their own interests. Everything seems fine—until Lara decides something is missing: “At thirty-nine years old, all Lara James wanted was a baby.” The fulfillment of her desire turns out to be much easier said than done. She has difficulties becoming pregnant, and her attempts to conceive turn costly, both financially and psychologically; she suffers miscarriages, and her contribution to the fertility industry is in excess of $250,000. And even though she projects an outward appearance of determination, she has lingering doubts: “Ambition had been her child for decades—fed, strengthened, followed. Could she both mother and succeed?” When Lara finally gets what she wants, will motherhood be all that she’d bargained for? Sokol doesn’t gloss over the details of Lara’s journey. Her first miscarriage’s aftermath, for instance, is described graphically: “Pubic hair, wet and gleaming, red and purple, clumped in curls. Between her legs was a crime scene.” The book does well at highlighting the protagonist’s hardest moments, though the overall story isn’t always a page-turner. First, the story pits Lara against her own body; then, it sets Lara against the difficulties of motherhood. The latter experience proves to be much more challenging, with endless crying, judgmental health professionals, and a great deal of attention paid to milk production. But readers know that it will end at some point—either Lara will come to terms with her situation or she won’t, but surely her infant won’t remain an infant forever. By the final pages, readers may be longing for the appearance of a toddler who can tell her distraught protagonist that it will all be over soon enough.
An often vivid portrait of a conflicted mother, although her struggle eventually becomes tedious.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-1832-6
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2017
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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