Clichés and overexplaining get in the way of the humor and genuine sentiment that this novel strains toward.
A Bengali widow embarks on a road trip of the U.S. with a Bangladeshi guide and a young American woman.
When Pival Sengupta’s husband dies, leaving her alone in their Kolkata house, what she mainly feels is relief. Ram had been a difficult, angry man who blamed his wife for all his woes. The most difficult of these had to do with their son, who moved to Los Angeles to study marine biology and, before long, called home to come out to his parents. He’s then effectively cut out of their lives. When Ram dies, Pival, who has never left Kolkata, decides to invest in a two-week tour of the United States, ending in LA. She’ll get to know the country her son loved before reconnecting with him—if he’s still alive; he might not be. To help with her trip, Pival enlists the First Class India USA Destination Vacation Tour Company, which sets her up with Satya, a naïve young Bangladeshi guide who’s always hungry, and, for modesty’s sake, a female companion named Rebecca. The three then set out on a road trip, chock full of all the tacky tourist traps, cultural clashes, and sappy heart-to-hearts you can imagine. This is Franqui’s first novel, and it’s tolerable, if not utterly original. She engages in quite a few road trip–novel clichés as well as greenhorn-in-America stereotypes. Worse, she has a habit of overexplaining her characters’ inner lives. She writes, for example, that “Ram’s authority destroyed Pival’s own sense of herself and replaced it with a version that Ram created.” This had already been clear; it doesn’t need to be spelled out. Still, the book is occasionally charming and occasionally engaging; despite everything, you’ll want to find out what happens in the end.
Clichés and overexplaining get in the way of the humor and genuine sentiment that this novel strains toward.Pub Date: July 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-266875-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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