A colorful and easygoing coming-of-age story.
In Ford’s novel, a young car thief in the 1950s runs away from home to find himself.
Conley Ford, called “Connie” by his family, grows up in Knoxville, Tennessee,in a clan of 16 kids, with him being the 15th. With so many of his older siblings living outside the family home and only visiting to tell tales of their lives away from it, it’s no wonder that 13-year-old Conley dreamed of doing more than going to school and doing chores. First, he gets mixed up in the “Mercury Gang,” a group of teenage boys that steal Mercury cars and take them for joyrides. After Conley is caught, his brother Ray, a lawyer, manages to get him just a year of probation. But Conley realizes that if he goes back to school, everyone will see him as a criminal and outcast. He decides to run away and hitchhike south, heading to Atlanta and telling people tales along the way about an uncle who needs his help. He dreams of drinking orange juice in Florida and eventually makes it to the Sunshine State, only to continue to New Orleans; this is only the start of Conley’s adventures, which eventually lead him to a happy and successful life. Over the course of the novel, Ford fictionalizes her husband’s story, presenting a vivid tale of a young man who leaves home to find who he truly is and where he belongs. The author goes on numerous tangents in an effort to provide backstories for various characters, and as a result, Conley’s story gets lost in the shuffle here and there. However, Ford always comes back to him and tightens the focus on where he’s headed next. The tale also offers vivid, immersive descriptions of such things as Conley’s finally getting to drink a half gallon of OJ. Overall, it’s a fast-paced read that is appropriate for young adults, though older adults may feel more of a connection to the setting.
A colorful and easygoing coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73-631641-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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