Sharp, if relentless.
Swedish novelist Andersson (Willful Disregard, 2016) charts the course of an exhausting affair between a writer and a charmless, married actor.
Ester Nilsson, a poet/philosopher/translator, meets actor Olof Sten at the read-through of her first play, a “melancholy reflection on the agonies of love.” The play, called Threesome, is about a “man trapped in an unhappy marriage who meets another woman but can’t bring himself to leave his wife,” which—conveniently—is also the plot of this novel. After this first meeting, Ester and Olof fall into a hesitant noncourtship, made up of agonizing phone calls and text exchanges and sometimes drinks but never physical consummation. “His marriage was disintegrating; there was no doubt about that,” Ester decides. “All she had to do was wait.” Unfortunately for Ester, Olof seems not to have reached the same conclusion and instead insists that they do not have a romantic relationship and also that he has no intention of leaving his wife. This stance becomes somewhat complicated when, after several months, he and Ester do inevitably sleep together—when Olof in fact invites Ester to visit him for a weekend of skiing—but the affair never quite takes off in earnest on account of how Olof will never wholly concede that it is happening. As a result of their mutual attraction but nonmutual commitment, he and Ester break up and reunite repeatedly, with Olof offering just enough validation to keep Ester believing, despite some lack of behavioral evidence, that he is just about to leave his wife. Andersson’s writing, crisply translated from the Swedish by Vogel, is wry and refreshingly unsentimental, but the drawback of a 300-plus page novel charting the minutiae of an underwhelming relationship in excruciating detail is that it is excruciating; the relationship has little going for it, and while this is all too realistic, Andersson’s sharp eye and quick wit cannot quite redeem the experience.
Sharp, if relentless.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59051-903-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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