An earnest tale that explores the frictions of black-white romantic relationships.
A social novel tells the story of an interracial liaison disrupted by questionable criminal charges.
Sidonie Frame and Chris Hawkins are not the most obvious couple—she’s a white, suburban-raised manager of one of Chicago’s hottest music venues; he’s a black sound engineer from the South Side. But when Sidonie hires Chris sight unseen for a one-night event, they unexpectedly hit it off. The chemistry is real and intense, but is it a good idea? “This is crazy,” thinks Chris. “What am I thinking? This could jeopardize the job. Complicating my life right now is not a smart move. She’s so beautiful.…Is it the best idea to get involved with a white woman…and my boss?” They end up hooking up and then dating, but as they attempt to settle into the rhythms of each other’s lives, they discover that there is a learning curve to interracial dating. Neither of their families is completely accepting, and both partners are forced to reckon with their own pre-conceived notions of the other’s race. Sidonie, in particular, is compelled to recognize for the first time the prejudice that Chris routinely faces and her own white privileges. It isn’t always easy, especially during a series of uncomfortable encounters with the police that threaten to disrupt the balance of their relationship. This culminates in Chris being implicated in a rape case, forcing Sidonie to decide what she truly believes—and whether the relationship is worth all the trouble. Wilke’s (Hysterical Love, 2015, etc.) prose is cautious and empathetic, probing at the edges of politeness, taboo, and uncomfortable truth, as when Sidonie’s mother reacts to the news of Chris’ race: “Well, I guess I had no idea that was something that appealed to you, Sidonie.” The book portrays only one—fairly conventional—interracial narrative and does so in what some might consider a heavy-handed fashion. But the directness and openness with which the author explores the topic as well as its continuing relevance make this a novel that will still read as daring to many.
An earnest tale that explores the frictions of black-white romantic relationships.Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-559-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 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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