No question about this author’s gift for striking imagery and vivid scene-setting, but her characterizations could be...
Hughes (Double Happiness, 2010, etc.) follows a family reeling from the loss of a child through two disordered years in New Jersey and London.
It’s not just the death of 8-year-old Cubbie that’s weighing on Nick, Jean, and Lily Devlin as the novel opens in 1969. Nick has been pressured by his manipulative, amoral brother, Lionel, to take a London-based job with volatile cosmetics tycoon Billy Byron, and Jean is unhappy about relocating to England from their home in Gooseneck Cove, a wedding present from her adored father that she’s turned into a showcase. Eighth-grader Lily is struggling to master the intricacies of early-adolescent social interactions; her self-assurance isn’t bolstered by the condescension of her mean-girl best friend, Margaret, and she displays an unfortunate weakness for boys who alternately entice and reject her. The first few chapters are a whirl of names and relationships that don’t yet make a lot of sense, since Hughes is lavish with allusions and sparing with concrete information, which tends to arrive piecemeal. It’s quickly clear, however, that Jean is fonder of her brother-in-law than she should be, even though Lionel has landed Nick into serious trouble before, and that Nick likes to indulge himself with intoxicants and extramarital sex, a tendency that will only worsen in London. The family dynamic is somewhat reminiscent of Hughes’ previous novel, Wavemaker II (2001), as is the mood of lurking dread. Here, the withholding narrative style effectively induces in readers the same state of disorientation that envelops all three Devlins in London (whose business and social scenes are depicted as vicious and corrupt), but it also tends to alienate us from the characters. Final plot twists and long-delayed revelations back in the U.S. are shocking but delivered in an elliptical manner that muffles their emotional impact.
No question about this author’s gift for striking imagery and vivid scene-setting, but her characterizations could be deeper, and she might consider the possibility that atmosphere is not everything.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2249-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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