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THE TRAIN TO PARIS

Name: THE TRAIN TO PARIS
Author: Sebastian Hampson
ISBN: 978-1-922147-79-0

by Sebastian Hampson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 4, 2014

A juvenile novel mired in old tropes.

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Two unlikable lost souls have brief encounters in France in this debut novel.

Twenty-year-old Lawrence, stranded in a European nowheresville after a tepid vacation with his girlfriend in Madrid, finds himself taken under the wing of a well-dressed, decisive woman named Élodie. Lawrence is an art history student from New Zealand set to study at the Sorbonne, Élodie is a mystery—a brasher, older Holly Golightly. Both are trying to get back to Paris, but the rail system has mostly shut down, so Élodie hails a cab and takes them to Biarritz. There, with her husband’s credit card, she pays for a new set of clothes for Lawrence, a suite at the Palais, champagne and caviar. She and Lawrence snark at each other through dinner, she ignores him to flirt with an unappealing old friend, she throws herself into the hotel pool, forcing Lawrence to come to her rescue, and, inevitably, beds him. Lawrence’s feelings about Élodie don’t seem to change from the first: He disdains and is obsessed with her. When she calls him after many months and invites him to meet her in Paris, he fantasizes about standing her up in a way that borders on creepy. He goes to see her anyway, of course, and their second day together goes much like the first. There is a hint that they are softening toward each other, but to what end? Any change in either character—or their circumstances—is negligible. Though clearly trying to ape Paris’ famous misogynist heroes, Hampson offers none of the marrow-sucking vigor of Hemingway or the dizzying self-destructiveness of Miller. He also lacks the ability of his more successful navel-gazing contemporaries to add compelling emotional texture to youthful ennui.

A juvenile novel mired in old tropes.

Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-922147-79-0

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Text

Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.