A people lover’s book. Characters grow and change; family and friends support each other. Predictable, but comfortably so,...
This sequel to Landvik’s debut novel (Patty-Jane’s House of Curl, 1996) reads easily as a stand-alone. A light read—not deep, but definitely wide—the story follows Ione Rolvaag’s family (and friends) for two decades.
The Rolvaag family, from matriarch Ione on down to her great-grandchildren, lives, laughs, and loves at Blue Moon Lodge. In a nutshell, Ione gets a second chance at the love of a lifetime. Her daughter-in-law, Patty Jane, can’t marry the man she loves because her legal husband, Thor, has returned, brain damaged, after a 15-year absence. Nora, Patty Jane’s (and Thor’s) daughter, has a one-night stand that leaves her more than surprised (three guesses), but in this basically optimistic tale, she finds love, too. And her kids, and those of her half brother, turn out well, so happiness overrides the sad events that are spattered throughout. Nora’s newly acquired Blue Moon Lodge in rural Minnesota is the focal point for the action, a cozy place where friends and family gather. The novel’s lengthy time frame slows forward momentum. There’s no definitive plotline, just four generations living, loving, learning, and struggling through the occasional hard times over a span of 20 years. It’s a story about family—but chock full of other characters, too, and much dialogue. There is a charm and warmth to this hopeful tale in which love is the glue that holds people together. There is no apparent main character; each shares the spotlight in a short scene before the curtain drops and another’s stage is set. Landvik’s love for her characters is evident; she introduces multiple peripheral people, who serve as color in the backdrop of a close-knit family, and she has clearly thought deeply about the people she puts on the page. She even provides a detailed epilogue to show where life takes them after the book is closed.
A people lover’s book. Characters grow and change; family and friends support each other. Predictable, but comfortably so, this refreshingly simple family tale provides a comfy diversion from the everyday world.Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5179-0269-8
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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