A mournful tale of illness, accident and betrayal across generations from the author of Rainy Lake (1994).
When Minneapolis architect Carl Fens collapses at the opening of a museum retrospective devoted to his work, it’s an early sign of Shy-Drager syndrome, whose grim progress provides the novel’s only forward movement. Otherwise, Carl’s and his wife Hallie’s memories alternate with the narrative of his nervous system’s inexorable decline to depict a tension-riddled family nursing wounds both physical and psychological. Carl’s cheating father died in a car crash with his mistress when Carl was in high school; Hallie’s mother walked out when she was a child; and neither has really gotten over those old wounds. Carl’s obsession with his work has severely strained their marriage more than once, most notably in 1996, when Hallie left him and had a brief affair. The Fens’ daughter Beatrice still has neurological damage from being hit by a car as a child. Twin sister Cordelia lost her young husband three years ago in a fire that decimated Caddis Wood, the rural Wisconsin retreat where the family spends summers and holidays. It’s there that Carl discovers letters from Hallie’s former lover, shortly before he learns of his terminal diagnosis. He reacts with precisely the solipsistic anger and hurt you’d expect, and the unfolding details of Beatrice’s accident and Cordelia’s loss don’t exactly lighten the somber mood. There are some moving moments, such as Hallie’s tentative reconciliation with her mother, and it’s a nice touch that the rupture caused by Carl’s discovery of her affair is not resolved by a grand scene of forgiveness, merely subsumed in a painfully new level of intimacy as Hallie tenderly cares for her dying husband. Still, there’s an awful lot of woe here, more perhaps than one story can comfortably bear. Rockcastle writes compassionately about her characters’ grievances and hesitant attempts to grow, but lovely prose doesn’t entirely compensate for an excess of plot points and shortage of actual development.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55597-592-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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