A careful and extremely sensitive work of generational fiction.
An interlinked collection of stories about a fictional Irish American family.
McGuigan's collection of 16 tales follows the changing fortunes of the Donnegans, a large clan beset by many tragedies, the worst of which is that the head of the family, a violent alcoholic named Peter, frequently terrorizes his wife and his six young children. Moira, one of these kids, becomes the main focal point of many stories here, which feature an ever increasing cast of nieces, nephews, cousins, and more distant Donnegan relations. The family emigrated from Kilrush to the United States in 1849, but McGuigan's stories cover a span from 1955 to 2008. Several works effectively show Moira’s progression from child to mother; in “The Snow Fort,” set in her adulthood in 1984, she reflects on her anxiety over her sensitive boys, Sean and Michael, as she comes to terms with an impending separation from the kids’ father: “How complicated it was to love a child….Even when the boys were infants, she feared she wasn’t doing it right.” However, other members of the family also get time in the spotlight; for instance, in the 1986-set “To Express How Much,” aspiring author Kevin Donnegan wants to host a writing group at his home, but he’s silently terrified that his father will come back to the house loudly drunk while the group is in session: “It has taken him so long, so many years about this, to name it,” McGuigan writes evocatively. “Kevin just didn't want to be the one to make it plain, the ugly thing that no one in the house wants to name.” The empathy and delicacy of the author’s handling of the generational impact of abusive behavior are almost unbearably effective in this story and others. Indeed, the works are full of haunting intangibles that will resonate instantly with readers who’ve lived through similarly difficult domestic situations.
A careful and extremely sensitive work of generational fiction.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 223
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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