An uneven read that ultimately delivers a compelling investigation.
Part murder mystery, part family saga, this historical novel follows a young woman of Swedish ancestry who’s determined to uncover a secret that tormented her grandmother for years.
In 1939 Sweden, Helga Johansson is visiting her family; she recently emigrated from that country to Oregonwith her little daughter Sofia. Helga’s Polish and Jewish sister-in-law, Rebecca, has died under mysterious circumstances; at the same time, the widower, Helga’s brother Johann, is taking in their brother Gunnar’s son to raise. This distant episode will mysteriously haunt Helga for decades, causing her to suffer from nightmares and scream in her sleep. Her behavior deeply troubles her daughter and, later, her granddaughter, Lena—especially after the trauma leads Helga to commit suicide. Lena, in her late teens, begins her own investigation, questioning her mother; her neighbor Mrs. Lundberg, whose husband owned the fishing company where her grandfather worked; and even Yael, her Jewish high school friend whose parents moved to New York after World War II. Although the first half of the novel spans 12 years, the plot never deviates from the central mystery; indeed, whether Lena is talking to her mother, her English teacher, or her boyfriend, the conversation seems to always return to her grandmother’s nightmares, screaming, and suicide. It’s not until a new loss pushes Lena to go to Sweden herself that the action picks up. Johann’s second wife, Hanna, and his nephew Axel are charming but secretive, and they both help and hinder Lena in her search for the truth. With the introduction of Skåne, the setting of the family farm in the south of the country, the book expands its themes, sprinkling in a few intriguing details of Swedish culture and customs as well as little-known facts about the country’s status and underground activities during World War II. Lena’s final discovery comes with a satisfying plot twist that reveals just how complicated family ties can be.
An uneven read that ultimately delivers a compelling investigation.Pub Date: June 11, 2022
ISBN: 9781977253286
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2023
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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