A still, luminous book whose precise characters evoke broad truths about the human experience.
A widow restarts her life after a decade of mourning in this 1966 novel, the first by this towering Portuguese novelist to be translated into English.
Dora Rosário is the manager of a finely appointed antiques shop nicknamed The Museum, the mother of teenage Lisa, and an independent woman living in Lisbon in the prime of her life. Yet, ever since the death of her husband, Duarte, 10 years earlier, Dora has devoted her days to tending and preserving his memory. In life, Duarte was an insufficient spouse—a self-appointed Christ figure with “vast reserves of passive resistance,” which he used to rebuff all his mother’s proclamations that “her son would one day cause a stir.” When Duarte died, he left Dora and the young Lisa destitute and forced to rely on his indomitably eccentric mother, Senhora Dona Ana, for material support until Dora became the manager of the antiques store, the first job she had ever held. For a decade this is how the women's lives progress. Lisa grows up to become a graceful, witty, and entirely insouciant teenager, Dona Ana has begun to slip into senility, and Dora lives as “a career widow,” following a ritualistic routine among the dusty remains of other people’s memories. Then, on the night of Lisa’s 17th birthday party, Dona Ana reveals a devastating truth about her son that calls into question all of Dora’s devotion. What follows fundamentally changes the lives of all three generations of Rosário women, but particularly Dora, who must now look clearly for the first time at the legacy her husband has really left her: a desiccated life lived at the behest of a society that views her value only in accordance to her relation to men.
A still, luminous book whose precise characters evoke broad truths about the human experience.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949641-21-9
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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
Saunders has crafted a novel that feels deeply resonant, especially in these fractious times.
Saunders’ second novel represents a magnificent expansion of consciousness.
Unfolding over the course of a single evening, as oil baron K.J. Boone lies on his deathbed, the narrative develops almost entirely in the interior, while encompassing a dizzying exteriority as well. At its center are two characters, one deceased and the other soon to be. The latter, of course, is Boone, a man with much to answer for, although he doesn’t believe that. The other is Jill “Doll” Blaine, the narrator, who died young and has returned to earth from the spirit realm—as she has 343 times since her own demise—to help him make the crossing. If such concerns appear to recall those of the author’s first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), that both is and isn’t the case. Yes, as the book progresses, it ranges widely, with a variety of ghosts and spirits emerging to comment on or participate in Boone’s final reckoning. At the same time, it’s a sparer work than its predecessor. This has to do with Jill, who moves from memories of her life to engagement with Boone. Always, she reveals empathy and insight, even as his final hours become a dark night of the soul. “No: this, this now, was me,” she tells us: “vast, unlimited in the range and delicacy of my voice, unrestrained in love, rapid in apprehension, skillful in motion, capable, equally, of traversing, within a few seconds’ time, a mile or ten thousand miles.” What she (or, through her, Saunders) is suggesting is the need for generosity, despite, or perhaps because of, Boone’s corrupted soul, which has been riven by a lifetime wallowing in many of the deadly sins, particularly pride and greed. Such openness has long been a hallmark of Saunders’ fiction, and it’s on full display in this elegant and subtle book. “At such moments,” Jill reflects, “I especially cherished my task. I could comfort.”
Saunders has crafted a novel that feels deeply resonant, especially in these fractious times.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9780525509622
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
