An intriguing premise delivered in turgid prose.
A first-time novelist considers identity and obsession in the digital age.
Alice Hare is no longer quite herself—not that she ever had much of a self to begin with. Having been abandoned by her father, she has no one but her mother, a woman who is possessive, secretive, and manipulative. As she tries to piece together her own history, Alice becomes fixated on the period of her life she and her parents spent in Japan. A baby at the time, she has no memories of this sojourn, so she's free to invent. Eventually, this attempt to fabricate an identity turns into an intense fascination with the author Mizuko Himura, whom Alice comes to know in real life after stalking her via social media. This would make a great premise for a thriller, but it’s quite evident Sudjic has more literary ambitions. The result is a story that's hard to follow even though it moves at an incredibly slow pace. One difficulty is that it moves around in time, and disparate episodes don’t build on each other so much as they expose how much the reader doesn’t know. This might make stylistic sense for a novel about a young woman tortured by the lacunae in her own life, but it’s dissatisfying and disorienting. For example, the novel begins with Alice being shut out by Mizuko, and then it shifts into a long stretch dominated by letters from Alice’s paternal grandmother. We learn about Alice’s gap year in Japan after she graduated from university, and her momentous first evening with Mizuko happens without any description of how and why Alice became infatuated with her. Another example: Alice makes passing mention of her “boyfriend at that time,” which comes as a shock since this is not only the first we’re hearing of a romantic entanglement of any kind in her life ever, but it’s also the first hint that she’s made any new relationships at all since her move from England to New York. It doesn’t help that Alice’s real-world connection to Mizuko relies on a preposterous series of coincidences.
An intriguing premise delivered in turgid prose.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-83659-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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