A clever, incisive character study that explores romance and strife.
A debut literary novel focuses on a troubled couple’s relationship dynamics.
What happens when cracks start to form in the ideal life? Hannah and Will Abbott embody the picture-perfect existence, with their supportive marriage, beautiful home, and two wonderful kids. But when each starts to suspect the other of infidelity, the ordinary points of friction in any relationship spiral into a major crisis. The plot really kicks off when Hannah seeks advice from a divorce attorney, dramatically escalating tensions until neither spouse can stop their stories from taking on lives of their own. It’s at this point that the novel truly shines, with the introduction of David Dewey and Rachel Goldstein, Will’s and Hannah’s respective attorneys, as point-of-view characters, lending the portrait of the couple more depth. Additionally, the lawyers spur the proceedings forward, rapidly escalating tensions even as their personal and professional lives become increasingly entangled with the Abbotts’. But an unexpected opportunity presents itself when Will and Hannah get an offer to appear on a reality TV show about divorcing couples. With the gorgeous backdrop of St. John and millions watching, the two are surrounded by distractions and temptations, but they may also finally have the breathing room to think things over the right way and decide whether this is an ending or a new beginning. Treese’s prose is strong and naturalistic throughout, giving readers deep insight into the characters’ thought processes and sticking close to their perspectives. The story also occasionally skips around in time, especially toward the beginning, which provides a detailed look at the relationship. If there is a fault in the characterization, it’s that Will and Hannah lean toward the archetypal. He’s spontaneous while she’s fastidious; she’s composed when he’s childish. These are familiar tropes, but the humor, the momentum of the plot, and the complications and viewpoints presented by Rachel and David more than make up for any sense of rote familiarity. Ultimately, this nuanced and empathetic novel balances the difficult and the heartwarming, managing to become more than the sum of its parts.
A clever, incisive character study that explores romance and strife.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73589-610-6
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Moxie Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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 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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