A somewhat inert protagonist headlines this resonant depiction of late-20th-century America.
A young aspiring rock guitarist falls for a girl and seriously contemplates his future in Hartje’s early-1990s coming-of-age novel.
High school junior and Idaho resident Jason Krabb dreams of making it big in a rock band—practicing guitar chords takes precedence over studying. Things take an unexpected turn for the 17-year-old when he runs into Allen Heber at a party in the woods. Hot-tempered Allen was kicked out of Jason’s high school in his freshman year; now he’s a laid-back guy on a pipeline crew. Jason begins to think that being a pipeliner might be preferable to sticking around for his senior year. Around the same time, the perpetually horny teen meets a girl named Betsy, who is Allen’s girlfriend’s younger sister. She’s from a rival high school, and her family isn’t as well off as “rich kid” Jason’s. Jason becomes enamored with Betsy, and, while he still aims to be a famous guitarist, he wonders if maybe this girl and a pipeliner’s lifestyle await him on his path forward. Hartje ably captures 1993 Americana, reveling in music and mixtapes. The author’s straightforward prose describes such recognizable moments of adolescence as a virgin’s awkwardness in sexual situations (“It felt ridiculous to be doing this and he couldn’t believe it was happening”) and peer pressure regarding drug use. But what truly stands out is a series of entertaining parallels: Jason’s current bandmates, for example, include his best friend, Doug Stills, on drums as well as “know-it-all” bassist Marty Bachmann, whom Jason doesn’t even like. Similarly, shiftless Jason is the veritable opposite of his older, Princeton-attending brother Robert; Betsy provides a similar contrast to Robert’s Mormon girlfriend, Mindy Smith. Unfortunately, Jason doesn’t evolve as much as readers may hope—he’s a typically self-absorbed teenager with a touch of angst who forgoes most opportunities to mature.
A somewhat inert protagonist headlines this resonant depiction of late-20th-century America.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2018
ISBN: 9780999854105
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Helen Springs Press
Review Posted Online: May 21, 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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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