A tale of indulgence and camaraderie that ultimately proves moving.
In this debut novel, some graduates and friends spend their last days at an American college partying before embarking on their separate paths to adulthood.
Having only a weekend of university life remaining, a small group of friends makes plans to celebrate with alcohol, weed, and sex. Justin will be leaving soon for his medical internship while Harry, his roommate and childhood friend, is returning to South Carolina to start a business. They’re pals with Clarence, whose duties as a police officer begin on Sunday, and Trent, who’s notorious for his impressive inability to hold down a job. In fact, Trent has just lost his gig at the smoothie shop and now has no responsibilities during their weekend of partying. Joining the four are Courtney and Ling-Ling. Though they’re all friends, Courtney and Harry have dabbled in casual sex, which is something Ling-Ling and Justin may try if they can move past their awkward timidity. In between bouts of nostalgic reminiscing, the friends go out for drinks while weed dealer Schroeder provides them with a steady supply of buds. They revel in merriment as the Sunday of woeful goodbyes gradually approaches. Cassidy’s unfiltered story delivers frank discussions and explicit sexual acts. But despite the debauchery, the book is often encouraging. Characters, for example, have fond memories of one another; for example, Harry and Justin met in elementary school. Likewise, their banter and mutual jabs aren’t mean-spirited. The story skillfully alternates among the first-person narratives of various characters, including professor Goodkat, who lives and parties like a student. Dialogue is sometimes indistinguishable, as many of the players employ the same slang, but this also prompts well-placed humor. For example, the friends, while getting high, trade drolly profound thoughts: “If two vegans are arguing, is that still considered a beef?” The bold, unexpected ending shows that preparing for every one of life’s events remains an impossibility.
A tale of indulgence and camaraderie that ultimately proves moving.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-54425-0
Page Count: 292
Publisher: M & S Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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