No good news can be good news nonetheless; the troubled cast’s tribulations make for an absorbing read.
Move over, millennials: There are few folks younger than 50 in the love-thwarted but intriguing circle of friends created by debut novelist Dainty.
The center of the action is an unhappy London family, riven by a recent divorce. Wife Penny is seeking peace of mind through a solipsistic life in a charming French town; adult daughter Emily has escaped to India, where she's a devotee of an unseen guru; and grown son Matthew is a nonrecovering druggie. Husband Sandy, a once-celebrated songwriter whose inattention and infidelities broke up the marriage, is faring worst of all; early in the book, he tries unsuccessfully to commit suicide by hurling himself in front of an oncoming car. The surrounding characters are middle-aged friends of the couple; most carefully drawn is Jeremy, Sandy’s school friend and benefactor, a boastful, Madoff-like financier. No one in this crowd can find the formula for an enduring romantic relationship, least of all Tim, an impotent therapist whose longtime marriage to the irritating Angie is nevertheless the matrimonial prizewinner here. Despite the midlife angst that abounds, Australian-born journalist Dainty, who lives in rural England, knows how to tell a good story and keeps the narrative moving. A notable exception, though, is the geriatric sex scenes, which are unconvincing or, worse, gross. (Sandy’s “penis jumped like a minnow in a stream, then retracted. It wasn’t used to this.”) Jeremy, who has a predilection for rough sex with underage girls, ultimately betrays Sandy, though the songwriter had saved him from doom decades before. In the end, almost everyone is damaged goods with little chance of achieving satisfaction.
No good news can be good news nonetheless; the troubled cast’s tribulations make for an absorbing read.Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7137-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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