A leaden plot laced with sugary prose.
A young boy struggles to weather his own family tragedies while attempting to save his best friend from an abusive father in Elliott’s novel.
In 1968, Francis Paulson is a 14-year-old boy in St. Paul, Minnesota, on a mission. Izzy, his best friend since the fifth grade—a rambunctiously ungovernable boy—has been terrorized by an abusive father since the tragic death of his brother, Jack, an event that transformed Izzy’s father into a “big fat gambling drunken jackass.” Francis schemes to raise enough funds to finance an adventurous river trip for them in a fit of adolescent wanderlust of the kind imagined by Mark Twain. However, Francis is beleaguered by troubles of his own, hardships so monumental they challenge his very faith: Francis’ beloved grandmother Rose dies of cancer, and his sister Shannon is so badly burned in a fire that she is given up for adoption to a family more capable of caring for her. As a result of the emotional stress, his other sister, Mandy (Shannon’s twin), becomes dangerously obsessed with fire, a condition that cries out for psychological help. When Francis’ newest sister Cynthia arrives stillborn, and Father Joseph explains she is permanently lost in the “limbo” of purgatory, the boy’s Christian faith is profoundly unsettled. Elliott has a finely tuned ear for the melodramas of adolescent life—Francis’ innocent romance with Susan Flannagan, a pretty girl loathed by Izzy, produces a maelstrom of relatable intramural squabbles. Unfortunately, the Job-like travails of the protagonist are buried in treacly sentiment and the author’s indefatigable efforts to tug at the reader’s heartstrings. (Francis’ family owns a failing candy factory, and the novel concludes with recipes for treats like Frank’s hot-lava butter almond toffee.) Sermons like these add a didactic banality to the mix: “They are not lost who find healing and peace by searching for truth, sometimes questioning their faith, and also occasionally indulging in the food of the gods: fine confections.” One wishes the author had lent his impressive talents to a story of rebellious teen adventure rather than this melodramatic morality tale.
A leaden plot laced with sugary prose.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781643436159
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Beavers Pond Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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