An evocative and deeply felt narrative portrait.
On the eve of the Iranian Revolution, a large extended family splinters as all of its members evaluate their places—or lack thereof—in the rapidly changing country.
From a busy Parisian street corner on the day of a solar eclipse in 2012, Shazdehpoor—an elderly Iranian expatriate—reminisces about a day 30 years earlier when “the moon slowly swallowed the sun” in what now feels like an alternate universe. On that day, in a lush, apple blossom–scented orchard belonging to Bibi-Khanoom and her husband, retired judge Akbar-Agha, the family gathers for its first spring lunch. But even as they dine together, secrets and familial strife hum beneath the surface. Akbar-Agha debates the limits of governmental justice with his brother, the firebrand mullah Haj-Agha; Bibi-Khanoom’s niece, Ghamar, barks at her meek tailor husband, Mohammad-Agha, masking an insidious marital conflict; and their daughter Nasreen sneaks off among the cherry trees on a tryst with Shazdehpoor’s son Madjid. The absence of Madjid’s opium-addicted brother, Jamsheed, is also palpable. But when a deadly conflict between two young men breaks out in the town square and inflames the bitter rift between a pro-Islamic faction and its opponents, the family is drawn into the unrest it spurs. As the mullah and Jamsheed take the side of the "martyr" who killed his "elitist" foe, Madjid—newly a university student and eager to help shape the country’s future—is caught in a deadly trap by a sinister political group. When the eclipse approaches and danger spreads through the region, the family members must each weigh their allegiances to their blood and beliefs. In her lush and atmospheric debut, author Ghaffari sketches a complex portrait of a country on the brink of revolution and explores the poignant ways political unrest can bind or tear families apart. Although Nasreen and Madjid’s romantic plotline sometimes veers into predictable territory, the story’s generous emotional core offsets it in a nuanced, character-driven exploration of a formative moment in a country’s complicated history.
An evocative and deeply felt narrative portrait.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948226-09-7
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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