An underdeveloped fictional landscape.
Harrison’s debut explores class privilege and true love in 1938 Montauk.
When financier Carl Fisher, who made and lost a fortune developing Miami Beach, took an ill-advised gamble on the rockbound sand spits of Montauk, Long Island, he paved the way for future development—and this novel. Harrison’s protagonist, Beatrice, and her banker husband, Harry, check into Montauk Manor—the luxury resort built by Fisher, which still stands today—with plans that she will summer there while he works in the city. Locals from Montauk’s seaside fishing village comprise the servant underclass at the manor, among them Elizabeth, who collects the guests’ laundry to wash in her humble cottage. Bored with the manor’s indolent coterie of wealthy wives, Beatrice, whose own background is middle-class, befriends Elizabeth. Although ostensibly sharing Beatrice’s longing for a child, Harry has been neglecting his husbandly duties, because, as Beatrice learns, his business in the city is monkey business. But Harry’s protracted absences permit Beatrice to pursue an affair with her true soul mate, lighthouse keeper Thomas. The dialogue is exposition-heavy, and the characterizations seem rote, as does the plot. For example, Beatrice’s only ally at the manor, Dolly, seems drawn from the Rosalind Russell character in the movie The Women, complete with flamboyant hats. Dutiful but brief attention is paid to American isolationism and FDR’s reluctance, then, to engage Hitler. The destabilizing force of gentrification is decried at times, but through Beatrice, Harrison concedes that “Fisher had developed Montauk without ruining its beauty.” Beatrice, writing anonymously for a Manhattan paper, exposes the foibles of the moneyed but mindless summer people, including their habit of sending soiled diapers home through the mail, overburdening the local post office. Harrison fails to mine the rich vein of conflict that a mole in the manor’s midst might have generated. The novel’s central question is typical of movies of that era: Is it better to have true love but no money? Or loveless riches? It is a controversy (among many others) that this book handily dodges.
An underdeveloped fictional landscape.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20011-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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
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
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