From the brookwater prose and hovering sentence fragments of “Helmut” to the rich unfolding of the second and third stories,...
Dazzling debut by a gifted British-born author now living in Germany.
This three-part work's opening story, “Helmut,” begins in a Berlin photographer’s darkroom but then expands to take in the whole Third Reich and ghosts still lingering there. Photos taken by Helmut, a slow-witted photographer’s assistant, bring Berlin into focus in shades of gray, as if on film developing in chemicals. Helmut collects a street history of Berlin during the ’30s and under Allied bombing but has little feeling about what he’s doing and even thinks victory is at hand as Berlin falls. In the second tale, “Lore,” the eponymous teenage protagonist becomes head of the family when her parents are thrown into Allied internment camps after Germany surrenders. She must herd her four siblings many hundreds of miles across Bavaria to her grandmother’s house in Hamburg, all the while pushing a baby carriage full of belongings, bedding, and crockery through a countryside awash with starvation and wandering skeleton people just released from concentration camps. “Lore” excels as a small-scale model of epic storytelling. “Micha,” set in the late 1990s, strikes even more deeply. Young Micha, a teacher, finds himself bedeviled by second-hand guilt about what may have been his grandfather’s bloody misdeeds as a Waffen-SS soldier in Belarussia, where the Nazis murdered all Communists and Jews. After the war, the Soviets interned Granddad for nine years—but for what crimes? Micha's entire family and his pregnant girlfriend plead with him to abandon his obsession (they revere the patriarch as a charming artist), but he hurtles into his forebear’s perhaps horrid past with long hours of research into the files of Nazi criminals and many trips to a village in Belarussia where his grandfather may dutifully have killed hundreds.
From the brookwater prose and hovering sentence fragments of “Helmut” to the rich unfolding of the second and third stories, Seiffert’s style and sensibility are superb throughout.Pub Date: May 11, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-42104-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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