This measured, thoroughly engaging coming-of-age tale hits all the right emotional notes.
A young woman reflects on the years leading up to her beloved brother’s disappearance in Sasson’s novel.
In 2012, “Grub” Donohue sits outside the home of the man who she believes is responsible for the loss of her brother. The story hops back to the start of the millennium, when she’s a 14-year-old living with her family in Sydney, Australia. Her warmhearted parents love both of their children, though everyone, it seems, has a particular fondness for Grub’s older brother, Elijah. He’s a skilled swimmer, an inspired artist, and, like his mother, an exceptional cellist. He also dotes on his little sister, whom he’s often playful with and always protective of. Grub doesn’t like it when Elijah starts spending so much time with the same-aged Zed, even if she’s mysteriously drawn to this boy. It’s not just that he’s taking away moments with her brother; Zed may be a bad influence, too (the friends, for example, sneak out on a weeknight). Years later, in 2010, Grub works toward her dream of becoming a physician—she’s a student and part of a group researching diseases affecting memory, mood, and movement. Elijah, who’s still glued to Zed, is the quintessential starving artist with a perpetually empty wallet. Zed ropes Elijah into taking a job that’s more than it appears, and Grub’s once-affectionate brother takes a turn for the worse. Then he suddenly vanishes, leaving his family with more questions than answers. Is it all because of Zed? Or is there something else Grub has yet to learn—or simply doesn’t want to face?
Sasson methodically unspools Grub’s and Elijah’s stories. Grub, who narrates, is the true focus, and she easily wins the reader’s sympathy—this girl, who rarely complains, practically lives in her brother’s shadow; her longtime best friend crushes on him, and her mother gives the impression that she’s disappointed Grub isn’t as creative as Elijah. The Donohues are an intriguing bunch. The siblings’ dad was born in Northern Ireland, and their mom comes from a family of Sephardic Jews who emigrated from Egypt. This creates a visual distinction between the siblings, as Elijah sports a tan year-round and Grub’s skin is “so pale it glow[s].” As the story progresses, Grub experiences adolescence in convincing ways: She endures school bullies, has more than one romantic interest throughout the years, and deals with body image issues (her teen peers develop much faster than she does). Although readers will likely deduce which way Elijah’s story is headed, there’s a shock or two before the end. Before then, the protagonist mixes with dynamic characters, from Zed (who always has a scheme he’s cooking up) to a teacher who leaves a lasting impression. Grub’s narration often approaches the poetic: “I carried around this secret of wanting to be a physician like carrying something stolen in my pocket. I tried to hide it but at the same time I couldn’t resist reaching in and pulling it out to toy with.”
This measured, thoroughly engaging coming-of-age tale hits all the right emotional notes.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781922848420
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Affirm Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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