A charming work about two damaged, intertwined families.
Piano (Hostile Takeover, 2016) tells the story of two families dealing with the fallout of a tragic death in this novel.
The sudden death of Stu Hammand in a car accident at age 18 has a tremendous impact on the lives of those around him. UCLA freshman Sunny Riddick is heartbroken, and she does little other than sit in her room mourning the loss of the boy she hoped to marry. Meanwhile, Stu’s parents’ marriage falls apart, adding to his father Ted’s near-unbearable heartache: “Ted had read that about 20 percent of parents who lose a child get divorced....It made him sad to think he was on the wrong side of that statistic.” The Hammands aren’t the only ones on the rocks: Sunny’s parents, Durk and Aleen Riddick, have also separated, creating greater distance between Sunny and Aleen even as they both mourn Stu’s loss. Amid all this upheaval, a new family of sorts forms, as Aleen, Sunny, and Ted begin meeting every Sunday to watch Stu’s favorite football team, the Green Bay Packers, play on television. What begins as a way to honor Stu soon turns into a method for them all to move past loss. The more time that they spend together, the more that they realize that the dissolutions of both marriages are more complicated than they thought—and that the two couples have more in common than the relationship between their children. Piano writes in conversational prose that makes no effort to blunt or hide the emotions of her characters: “Sunny’s words from that night were seared into her brain. ‘You killed him. You two killed Stu.’ ” The story is well-paced, and Piano handles the shifting perspectives of the three main characters in a way that slowly and satisfyingly spools out each complicating detail. Sometimes the dramatic situations strain credulity—the work is pure melodrama at its heart—but the author manages to keep the reader invested with sheer curiosity about what happens next. Fans of stories of good, earnest people entangled in messy relationships will find plenty here to enjoy.
A charming work about two damaged, intertwined families.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943006-20-5
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Spark Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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