A pair of resilient heroes memorably explores creativity across the ages in this vibrant tale.
Two women’s artistic ambitions converge across continents and centuries in this novel.
In present-day Philadelphia, Ellie Waldon has not been able to pull herself out of a slump after her husband’s death from cancer. The discovery that her boss has been passing off her work as his own is the last straw, and she quits her job. But before she storms out, her work as a brand manager introduces her to the oeuvre of pioneering 19th-century artist Suzanne Valadon. The narrative then pivots to Suzanne’s tumultuous life in Paris. Raised by an alcoholic single mother, Suzanne is expelled from convent school at 11 years old and hurtles between various jobs, always dreaming of becoming an artist. Molnar’s book proceeds to alternate between Ellie’s and Suzanne’s storylines. Ellie learns that most museums display only 2% to 4% of their art at a given time. With Suzanne as her inspiration, Ellie decides to found the Museum of Unseen Art to “display art that nobody sees because it’s stashed away in basements in musty drawers.” Ellie’s efforts to change her life are challenged by her older sister’s skepticism and the specter of the home she lived in with her husband, which she was forced to sell. In Paris, Suzanne eventually becomes an artist’s model, which gives her the opportunity to study painters and sculptors at work. She begins to understand “form, the way it’s born of light,” and uses her earnings to buy art supplies. Readers follow Suzanne’s encounters with famous artists of the time, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, and Degas, as she grasps at financial stability, creative satisfaction, and respectability. Fans of Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (2021) will find much to enjoy in this meticulously researched novel’s braided narratives. Suzanne’s storyline is particularly enthralling, with its glamorous locations and references to historical figures and events. Ellie’s story suffers slightly by comparison, not only because Philadelphia is no Paris, but because Ellie’s plot is somewhat overstuffed with dialogue, unnecessary plot twists, and too many characters. Although Molnar has a gift for quick character studies (at one point, she describes Ellie’s unctuous former boss as looking “like a meerkat on guard duty”), the book’s modern-day sections would have benefited from a slower pace and deeper character development.
A pair of resilient heroes memorably explores creativity across the ages in this vibrant tale.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781940627656
Page Count: 402
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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