A sometimes-moving but unpolished character study of a millennial undocumented immigrant.
In Bindra’s debut novel, a young Sikh immigrant from India comes of age at the height of the Great Recession and grapples with the obstacles that lie between him and the American dream.
Nine-year-old Arjun finds his world upended when his family moves to America in 1998. A scheme to fast-track their green cards results in heightened attention from immigration authorities, so Arjun’s panic-stricken mother flees back to India, leaving him, his younger sister, and their bitter father as undocumented immigrants in America. This separation continues for 13 years, and without emotional or financial support, Arjun must adapt to a post-9/11 culture that’s openly hostile to people who look like him, as well as plan for a future without citizenship. He undergoes multiple moves, physical ailments, and heartaches, desperately trying to remain strong while secretly craving the love and compassion of his absent mother. In the process, Arjun becomes aware of the systemic disadvantages faced by immigrants and low-income people, the disastrous global consequences of colonialism, and the ways in which a better world might be possible. The author brings a sense of specificity to Arjun’s story that paints a painful picture of his arduous circumstances. The prose style, however, is largely dry and meandering, and the pacing sometimes lacks finesse. Much of Arjun’s narration is expository and seems preoccupied with referencing pop culture to describe his experiences, as when he says that a “scenario played out like the movie The Proposal with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds” or when he compares a school crush to “Emma Watson’s character from the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” At another point, he quotes dialogue at length from the 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Despite such distractions, this story remains a timely one that explores pressing and challenging questions.
A sometimes-moving but unpolished character study of a millennial undocumented immigrant.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-977233-02-8
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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