In this sweet and heartfelt story, Simses provides a valuable lesson in the futility of striving for an error-free book of...
Grace Hammond is happiest holding a red pen and making corrections to the many grammatical errors in the world. If only she could do the same in her own life.
Thirty-something copy editor Grace is facing the romantic comedy setup trifecta of misfortune: she lost her job, her boyfriend dumped her, and her roof is leaking. While her Manhattan apartment is undergoing repairs, she spends two weeks at her childhood home in Connecticut as her parents plan a big birthday celebration for dad. By happy coincidence, Grace’s high school sweetheart, the one who got away, has also returned home for a few weeks. Fate has treated him more kindly, though, as he's in town directing a major feature film. In her effort to win back her lost love, Grace attempts a series of edits in her own life, failing both awkwardly and charmingly. Simses (The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Café, 2013) gives readers a protagonist they can simultaneously root for and cringe over as they read about Grace’s antics. Most squirmworthy is a scene in which Grace bumbles through a TV news interview about the bike shop where she's temporarily employed, clumsily suggesting it would be lost without her. Despite her many social gaffes, Grace has three eligible bachelors pursuing her, and it's no surprise which one she ultimately chooses. Despite the lack of suspense, the story has real heart and emotional grit, primarily because of the rich and layered subplot about Grace’s sister’s fatal auto accident as a teen. After 17 years, Grace still blames herself and would love nothing more than a rewrite of that fateful night. Alas, there is no red pen for her greatest mistake.
In this sweet and heartfelt story, Simses provides a valuable lesson in the futility of striving for an error-free book of life. A lovely read.Pub Date: May 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-38206-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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