Lush descriptions of time and place enhance a compelling love story.
London in the Roaring '20s, Paris during the German occupation, and a clifftop villa in 1980s Corsica serve as backdrops for a tragic love affair.
When Kate Darling's mother, June, dies in an airplane accident, the whole world mourns the loss of the former prima ballerina. Not long after, June's adoptive mother, Evie, shows Kate something she had kept secret for 30 years—a letter from June's birth mother and her portrait by renowned artist Thomas Stafford. When Evie dies days later, Kate is unmoored—her career as a photographer is stalled, and she's alone in their old London Victorian. When she contacts the reclusive Stafford about the drawing, he invites her to his home in Corsica, where she's treated to the unwinding of an epic story of love and loss. Thomas Stafford and Alice Eversley met one perfect summer when they were 6 and then again in their 20s; Tom was a student at Oxford and Alice, an aristocrat, one of the Bright Young Things. They fall in love: Alice encourages Tom's art, introducing him to useful people, and Tom sees the authentic Alice—not the shallow socialite but the bold little girl who was going to conquer the world. When she travels to Venice with her cosmopolitan aunt and returns pregnant, she's hidden away by her family and later moves on her own to Paris. This is the story the nostalgic Stafford tells Kate, but an intervening narrative, told from Alice's perspective, has the whole truth. Though the two occasionally connect—in Paris, in Corsica—Tom and Alice can never build a relationship. When star-crossed lovers are kept apart by one member's lack of commitment, it's hard to mourn their missed romance, making for a plot occasionally at odds with the tone. Kate may fare better—while in Corsica, she and Stafford's grandson Oliver begin to fall in love.
Lush descriptions of time and place enhance a compelling love story.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-37505-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Back Bay/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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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