Larger-than-life characters keep this take on Southern politics entertaining from start to finish.
In Kacmar and Patrice’s political satire, Southern women fight for their community’s health and sanity.
For 20 years, good old boy Terrence “Terry” Benedict Monroe III has served on the Weaver County, North Carolina Commission, most recently as its charismatic chairman. Terry is quick to dismiss the warnings of the state’s liberal governor when it comes to a mysterious illness affecting the county’s children. He prefers to stoke conservative fervor about gun rights and immigrant invasions and sleep with his disaffected mistress, Babs Marshall. As Babs grows fed up with Terry’s childish attitude, a group of more progressive women come together following one of Terry’s most incendiary rants. There’s longtime Weaver County resident Birdie Jefferson, pediatrician Deepa Kaur (who has come under Terry’s scrutiny for her Sikh faith), New York transplant Nina Gold, attorney Avery Lee, and Terry’s own assistant, Lucille Preston. Desperate to protect the town from racist attitudes and the growing health crisis, the women found Project Snowflake and strategize to get Lucille elected as Terry’s replacement. Terry quickly sees that he will have to up the ante to win, and the gun-toting loudmouth is ready to pull out all the stops. But with each woman bringing her own expertise and tenacity to the mix, Terry just may have met his match. Patrice and Kacmar are certainly enjoying themselves here: Dripping in Southern style, their send-up of bipartisan politics feels like a politically engaged update to Steel Magnolias. The misogynistic Terry is truly despicable, thanks to the author’s smart depictions of his gun obsession and mommy issues. While each of the female characters is given her moment to shine, Birdie and Nina stand out most for their sharp one-liners (the Jewish Nina doesn’t shy away from expressing her distaste for “neighbors that think [I] killed Jesus!”). The narrative is certainly playing with stereotypes and oversimplifications and can feel a bit cheesy at times, but it’s all in good fun. Readers willing to get on board will find themselves satisfied by several poignant moments of female empowerment.
Larger-than-life characters keep this take on Southern politics entertaining from start to finish.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781957224374
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Current Words Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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