This labor of love pens a soft-edged portrait of a subject who struggles to grasp complexity.
A wayward woman with little executive function tries to wrest back control of her life.
The classic advice to write what you know guides many a debut, often to fine effect. Adelman’s first novel is a tender example of this tenet—in the acknowledgments, she offers a tribute to her sister, “whose brain helped inspire Lucy’s.” And her heroine’s brain, damaged in an early childhood car accident, is a marvel: Lucy describes it as “a pinball machine lit up with pockets of potential.” When we meet her, that potential has lain dormant for a while. Coddled by a well-intentioned dad who leaves her a to-do list every morning that includes showering and dressing, Lucy spends her days drinking coffee and trying not to leave the house. Daily tasks and interactions flummox her, but she finds a safe haven in her sketchbook and passing glimpses of her mother, who died many years earlier. This haven implodes when Lucy’s father has a sudden heart attack: her absent younger brother, Nate (a polished 21-year-old who “didn’t have an awkward phase”), swoops in from college, sets her up in his tiny New York apartment, and kicks off the rest of their story. Plenty of plot follows, and minor characters traipse in and out, but none of that is the reason to read Adelman’s book. Lean in instead for the relationship between brother and sister, for its evolution as Lucy builds the strength and willingness both to take care of herself and to recognize and accept Nate’s shortcomings. The chronicle of this incremental shift is peppered with her drawings of people and animals—all done by the author’s sister—which play no small role in making Lucy’s often hazy perspective feel sharply real.
This labor of love pens a soft-edged portrait of a subject who struggles to grasp complexity.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-393-24570-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 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
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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