Not the strongest of the series.
Jen Dixon is now a caregiving grandma, a classroom parent, a PTA fundraiser, and a spin instructor—Stay in the saddle, riders!
We met the irresistibly snarky Jen as a kindergarten parent in Gelman's debut, Class Mom (2017), and caught up with her in third grade in You've Been Volunteered (2019). As our 53-year-old heroine's son enters fifth grade, Gelman's comic style has gotten a wee bit cramped—for one thing, she's already made a lot of the possible jokes about riding herd on the other parents, but also the mores of 2021 have taken some of the teeth out of her comedy. She can still do jokes about spelt-spirulina pretzels and gluten-free cookies; when Jen takes care of her daughter Viv's out-of-wedlock 2-year-old three days a week, she learns that "everything I did for [Viv] as a child has caused adult-onset you-name-it," resulting in a "parenting style that can best be described as a cross between Mary Poppins and the surgeon general." On the other hand, great care must be taken not to offend anyone, removing a lot of comic potential. Gelman confesses in her acknowledgments that her editor had "the unfortunate job of telling me over and over again, 'You can't say things like that anymore.' " Honestly, you can tell, though the struggle to tamp down the inappropriate didn't quite succeed in this amusing sentence: "My parents' possible dementia is nothing to laugh about, but the people in the basement have become a scapegoat for everything from who ate the last cookie to who killed JonBenét Ramsey." What's added to fill the void is way, way too much spin class. Do Gelman's readers really want to hear so much about Jen's vigorous exercise program, including 6:30 p.m. yoga classes and insights like "I have discovered that yoga is a great counter-workout to spinning, which has a tendency to tighten up my legs and hip flexors"? Let's hope that middle school gives Jen more room to breathe.
Not the strongest of the series.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-77757-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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