Atta writes lyrically and eloquently about ordinary life.
Atta (Everything Good Will Come, 2007) focuses on two women fighting against sexual harassment and trying to make a meaningful life in Nigeria.
Rose and Tolani (the novel’s narrator) share both a friendship and a workplace—a bank in Lagos—but at the beginning of the novel, Rose is sacked for refusing the advances of the repulsive Mr. Salako, a senior manager. While Rose is somewhat relieved to be out of an awkward situation, she’s mortified when Tolani is named to her position—and Tolani also finds herself harassed by the relentless Salako. Rose is fundamentally unhappy being Nigerian and instead wishes “she had been born in Czechoslovakia because the name sounded sophisticated.” Besides Salako, Tolani has problems with her lover Sanwo, who can’t quite commit either to a job or to her. She wants to give him an ultimatum that she hopes will result in marriage, but she’s fearful of the possible consequences because she finds it hard to imagine her life without him. Meanwhile, the increasingly desperate Rose takes up with OC, recently returned from a successful yet mysterious business deal in America. OC’s sleaziness makes Tolani uneasy, and her friendship with Rose—like her relationship with Sanwo—begins to falter. Tolani’s intuitions about OC turn out to be correct, for he’s a drug dealer who wants to use them both as mules to transport heroin in condoms to the States. Neither Rose nor Tolani can quite get the hang of swallowing the undigestible packages, and Tolani eventually decides on moral grounds that she doesn’t want to be exploited in this way. In increasingly distressed financial condition, Rose winds up being OC’s drug courier but dies when the package “explodes” inside her. By the end of the narrative, Tolani, who comes from a small Yoruba village, decides that life in Lagos is too wretched and corrupt, so she returns home to her mother, looking to start afresh—and include Sanwo in her future.
Atta writes lyrically and eloquently about ordinary life.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-56656-833-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Interlink
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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 thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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