Lengthy description bogs down an often-compelling tale of France and the joys of living abroad.
An American divorcée starts over in the French countryside in Samuels’ novel of renovation and romance.
In 2003, Barbara Waldheim, a language teacher and tour guide, starts her life over after the end of her marriage when she buys a restored farmhouse in southwestern France. As she fixes up her new home, she navigates all the rituals and customs of life in the French countryside. Construction, plumbing, and planting must all be done according to idiosyncratic rules that a foreigner must learn, as construction gets underway, Barbara plants roots in her new community, befriending charming neighbors with unconventional love lives. Between settling in and taking trips to smaller, lesser-known areas of France, Barbara is on the lookout for a man to share her life with: “I was willing to kiss quite a few frogs to find one who might turn into a prince.” After a few underwhelming encounters, she finds an unexpected partner in Sam,a Romanian contractor who shares her lust for life. As their relationship grows more serious, Barbara must rethink her vision for her new life and decide if she’s ready to make another change. Samuels weaves Barbara’s adventures in homeownership in the early 2000s together with flashbacks of her adventures as a foreign exchange student in Paris in the late ’60s. Like a picturesque French farmhouse, the story has good bones: Barbara’s adventures reveal many engaging tidbits about French life and history, going broader and deeper than the many other escapist books set in France, which tend to focus on Paris or Provence. Some descriptions of renovation are overly intricate; it’s easy to get lost in the many different approaches to plumbing and caulking techniques. Often, the sections about home repair are more detailed than the portraits of Barbara’s neighbors, friends, and lovers. Also, the love scenes are sometimes stilted and perfunctory, and Sam’s characterization isn’t as detailed as one would hope for a serious love interest.
Lengthy description bogs down an often-compelling tale of France and the joys of living abroad.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781637775561
Page Count: 285
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A loving and approachable coming-of-age story about generational change.
Strict traditions face encroaching modernity in this memoir of a Muslim girl.
The author was a jeweler’s daughter in Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, in the community of Galle Fort—at first blush, a traditional Muslim neighborhood. But in the 1950s, things were changing; already, the women of the island went out more than they had in years past and veiled themselves less. Before she reached the age of 12, Azad was allowed to spend time with her Christian friend Penny, ride a bicycle, and wear a bathing suit in public, and her doting, conservative father (whom she calls “Wappah”) was rarely unable to deny his daughter’s wants. However, her father still was committed to “the fierce protection of female honor” and still expected the women of his family to make a “good marriage,” so the author was “brought inside” when she came of age. But she was still interested in furthering her education and charmed by her English friends and Western comic books, so she hoped to attend university in the near future. But after her cousin ran off with a young man and Wappah reacted to the situation in an unexpectedly violent manner, subtle changes to custom and culture became more difficult to achieve. Azad’s debut memoir focuses on her memories of childhood and how she struggled against the more stringent aspects of her Muslim upbringing. However, her story is also the story of Galle Fort as the old-school residents struggled with young people becoming more Westernized. The setting is beautifully drawn, and its history comes alive. Just as important is the author’s father’s journey as a man who’s open to change but unsure of it. The book introduces many facets of Muslim culture with great respect, and Azad stingingly portrays Western prejudices, as when the author’s classmates face ridicule for using henna. She also relates her older family members’ opinions on such subjects as marriage while showing just how radical seemingly small changes can be in a traditional environment.
A loving and approachable coming-of-age story about generational change.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 249
Publisher: Perera Hussein Publishing House
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Observant, affecting writing about an Australian childhood.
Moncrief’s debut memoir recalls the joys and sorrows of growing up in an Australian country town.
“It was the late 1960s,” remarks the author, “but we were still living in what was effectively 1950s rural Australia.” Along with his older brother, Darren, Moncrief was raised in Tilburn, 30 miles outside of Melbourne. The memoir focuses predominantly on vivid memories from the author’s childhood in a quiet town where “everyone minded their own business and kept mostly to themselves.” Moncrief recalls journeys to a racetrack with his father, who trained horses, befriending a lizard that lived under the back step of the family home, and nursing an injured sparrow back to health. These sensitive recollections are interspersed with tales of cruelty and abuse. As a young boy, the author admits, he received so many bloody noses from his brother that one of his nostrils became “permanently blocked.” The memoir also charts the author’s coping with his parents’ divorce and grappling with adolescence. Each chapter is built around a particular person or event that left an impression on the author’s young mind. One, for example, discusses the author’s first sight of a pregnant woman and his father’s remarking, “pregnant women are beautiful.” This heavily anecdotal approach has the potential to grow tiring, but Moncrief avoids that by capturing a young boy’s naiveté in a satisfyingly amusing manner: “I couldn’t imagine what was wrong with her—that big, swollen stomach bursting forth from her body!” The author has the power to tug at the reader’s emotions—after his lizard was killed by a bully, he writes sorrowfully: “[I] pushed his little body into the crack from where I’d taken him the night before. ‘I’m so sorry, little mate,’ I said. ‘I love you so much.’ ” Moncrief puts a recognizably Australian stamp on the memoir by using Aussie vernacular, from dunny (toilet) to chooks (chickens). Tenderly evoking the minutiae of childhood while celebrating liberation from its horrors, this thoughtfully written, well-balanced book will encourage readers to reflect on their own upbringings.
Observant, affecting writing about an Australian childhood.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72839-716-0
Page Count: 234
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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