An elegantly crafted, unhurried examination of the enthralling and elusive nature of love.
A young woman in a rural French village acts as a matchmaker, but she worries she will never find love of her own.
Marie-Jeanne has possessed a special gift since her earliest days: She is able to detect a certain light that shines from people who have been touched by love. As a child, Marie-Jeanne was surprised to discover that others were unable to see that same light. When her foster father, Francis, hatches the idea of starting a mobile book library, Marie-Jeanne is thrilled by the idea of encountering more people and increasing her understanding of the mysterious glow. Francis takes the necessary steps to launch his mobile lending library and begins bringing new reading material to different villagers throughout Nyons, France. The “bookabus,” as the traveling library becomes known, grows quickly in popularity, and Marie-Jeanne travels along, delivering books as Francis’ assistant. As she sees that unusual glow coming from so many of the people she meets, she realizes the light shines more brightly when a person’s true love is near. Using a combination of her gift and lessons from books featured throughout the story, she is able to unite one pair of lovers after another. Unfortunately, her own light fails to shine, and she becomes increasingly concerned that she will never find her own match. Told from the perspective of Love itself—similar to the way The Book Thief is narrated by Death—the novel is brimming with magic. Love is wise and enigmatic, frustrating Marie-Jeanne by refusing to reveal certain information. Also making cameos are other metaphysical elements such as Logic and Fate. A loquacious olive tree serves as a mentor to Marie-Jeanne, doling out advice about the nature of love and meaning of life. Full of allegory and mysticism, the book often feels more like a poem than a novel. Though she mentions a few dates, author George limits the inclusion of modern inventions, creating a sense that the story takes place outside time. The plot moves slowly, with significantly more focus on concepts and emotions than action. What the story lacks in plot, however, it makes up in nuanced and enchanting introspection about love and books.
An elegantly crafted, unhurried examination of the enthralling and elusive nature of love.Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593157886
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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