Fernando writes expressively and finds an appropriate emotional correlative to convey a variety of tones, from nostalgic to...
A series of loosely concatenated stories focusing on the lives of first and second generation Sri Lankan immigrants in England.
The eponymous opening story introduces us to a large cast of characters, most of whom will play significant roles in later stories. The occasion for bringing everyone together is a 1982 New Year’s Eve party at Victor and Nandini’s home. Preethi, one of their three children, plays a particularly prominent role as we move through the book, for Fernando traces the vagaries of her romances, her marriage and her relationship to her own children. At the party, in an achingly honest response to the notion of their living out their dreams, Victor cries, “We belong nowhere...But if we belong anywhere, it is here. I have chosen here.” The desire to find a home indeed drives many of the characters, for they try to settle down, sometimes with the dreaded “white fellows” feared by Nandini’s brother. “Sophocles’ Chorus” explores the first love relationship of the 17-year-old Preethi and Ollie, a golden “boy-man” all of the girls aspire to. He casts a shadow over Freddie, who’s a great friend of Preethi’s but who yearns to be more. In a later story we learn that Preethi’s brother Rohan is struggling with his sexuality, for he feels attracted to both men and women. In “Honey Skin” we meet the 80-year-old Dorothy and discover she recently lost her husband, Hugo (who briefly appeared at the New Year’s Eve party), but still misses the sexual connection she had to him even though for years she’s fantasized about women. The penultimate story, “Meta General,” informs us that Preethi’s husband has lost his job, a victim of the 21st century economic downturn, while the final story focuses on the loss of a beloved aunt.
Fernando writes expressively and finds an appropriate emotional correlative to convey a variety of tones, from nostalgic to tragic.Pub Date: July 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-95810-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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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