Light fare, though with lots of mouthwatering descriptions of yummy food.
A second novel (after Leaving Patrick, 2001) from the doyenne of British cooking serves up a potentially zesty if uneven mix of sibling rivalry and true love.
Two sisters, the good Poppy and the sort of bad Carrie, grow up in South Africa on a bushveld farm, Kaia Moya. When their mother falls ill, the family moves to England, and, hiring handsome young Karl as manager, turns the farm into a game preserve with accommodations for wealthy tourists. As the story opens, Poppy is a famous actress, married to an Italian-born architect, Eduardo. and mother of two children—Angelina and toddler Tom—and about to adopt Lorato, an African refugee the same age as Tom. Younger sister Carrie, in her early 30s, has a catering business, writes about food, and arranges photo shoots. Single, with lots of lovers, she drinks too much, takes drugs, and envies Poppy’s seemingly perfect life. In childhood, she was always getting into trouble for wild behavior, and she’s the same now. Poppy loves her children, and soon has Lorato becoming the devoted companion of Tom. She loves acting, too, and her two perfect houses, one in London, one in the country. Everything is perfect, in fact, except for tired and preoccupied Eduardo. When Carrie, in Paris, sees him with another woman, she’s furious but is soon having an affair with him. When the family goes to Kaia Moya for their annual visit, Carrie is determined to wrest Eduardo away from Poppy, but Karl tries to warn her off. Back in London, a deeply hurt Poppy finds out about the affair and tackles Carrie. As the two sisters keep a cool but correct distance, Lorato, in Carrie’s charge, nearly drowns, and Carrie starts drinking so heavily that she loses commissions. She heads back to Kaia Moya and sets her sights on Karl. Poppy is as jealous as Carrie, but not to worry: this is a meal with a sweet ending.
Light fare, though with lots of mouthwatering descriptions of yummy food.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-28779-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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