An absorbing, quietly intense saga of upheaval and war as seen through the eyes of a child.
A girl experiences the Iranian Revolution, creeping repression, and war in Ghazirad’s novel.
The author focuses her story on Moji, a 6-year-old girl living in Tehran in 1978; her idyllic existence centers around her grandparents’ Sun Street house, where her grandmother, Azra, cooks succulent meals and her grandfather, Agha Joon, gardens and reads her and her little sister, Mar Mar, tales from One Thousand and One Nights. Life is upended when the shah is overthrown and Ayatollah Khomeini establishes the Islamic Republic of Iran. Moji’s father, an army officer who supported the shah, takes his wife and the children to America, where Baba, Maman, and the children endure anti-Iranian prejudice when members of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran are taken hostage. They return home after two years to find Iran profoundly changed: Many books and ideologies are now banned, and the struggle to keep every wisp of hair hidden beneath a headscarf becomes a preoccupation for Moji. Ensconced in her girls’ school, Moji chafes at Islamic puritanism. She swipes volumes from a hidden cache of banned books and develops a crush on a female teacher, which prompts erotic impulses condemned as sinful in Khomeini’s book of Islamic sex advice. Ghazirad’s novel is a lyrical evocation of Iranian life, full of limpid detail: “Azra emptied the water that had dribbled in the bowl underneath the globe-shaped samovar and blew the blue flame inside its chimney through the gridded opening. White smoke funneled up the samovar’s chimney and vanished in the air.” The prose develops a searing emotional charge as Moji registers the disasters engulfing Iran. “Uncle Zabih trembled as he called Amir’s name over and over again,” she observes at a funeral for a teenaged cousin killed in battle. “Tears glistened on his cheeks in the sunshine. Maybe he hoped his son could hear and respond. But Amir was dead silent among the moaning women and stunned men staring at the fast-filling grave.” The result is a heartbreaking coming-of-age novel, luminous but tinged with darkness.
An absorbing, quietly intense saga of upheaval and war as seen through the eyes of a child.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781958888100
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Blair
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 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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