An earnest and often engaging story about loss and family.
Joseph’s debut novel tells the story of an elderly couple seeking closure on the tragedies of their lives.
On New York’s Long Island in 1996, Holocaust survivors Eva and Max Stern are about to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. They want to get their entire extended family together, including their granddaughter, Amber; their estranged daughter, Beth; and their Israeli relative Ilan Stern, who’s just moved to America to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They even post advertisements in various countries throughout Europe in the hopes of tracking down any surviving relatives. The action then flashes back to Hungary in the 1940s, where Eva, 17 and pregnant, goes into hiding and gives birth before she’s separated from her child and sent to Auschwitz. Meanwhile, Max, a violinist whose dreams were shattered by anti-Semitism, ends up in the same camp with his family. He’s soon left with only his cousin, Sam, with whom he makes a survival pact. Max and Eva manage to survive the war, and they later meet in a displaced-persons camp, marry, and immigrate to America, where they struggle to build a new life together after losing almost everything. Back in 1996, as the loose ends of the couple’s lives are tied up, can they regain what they thought was lost? Joseph’s prose is measured and expressive, as when the Sterns receive their first introduction to New York, “where people laughed at perplexing jokes…..Where left-over food was tossed thoughtlessly into garbage cans, and lights burned twenty-four hours in tall buildings, even at night when people slept.” The book straddles several genres—it’s a novel of the Holocaust and of the immigrant experience, as well as a family saga—but it manages to feel intimate and contained, despite its length. The execution is uneven at times, however. Specifically, the story might have benefited from more character interiority; readers may sometimes feel as if they’re watching Eva, Max, and the others moving around on a set, instead of experiencing the characters’ emotional lives as they live them. Still, the narrative remains compelling enough to keep readers turning pages.
An earnest and often engaging story about loss and family.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 437
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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