An engaging novel that digs deep into mid-20th-century Guatemala.
A group of people from different walks of life attempt to conduct an archeological dig during a period of civil unrest in Garzon’s debut literary novel.
Guatemala, 1954. Outside the highland town of Chayaka, Portuguese archeologist Pablo Fuente excavates the Valley of Los Ancianos. The Chayakans are not thrilled with the idea of this foreigner disturbing the home of their ancestors, but at least it has meant jobs for some of the impoverished villagers. As the discoveries become more promising, Pablo increasingly shuts out his American wife, Meg, from the dig. She, in turn, fills her time with the left-wing group known by the acronym PROC—a political organization that supports the rights of the workers and peasants who make up the country’s vast underclass—and with one of its leaders, Sergio. Eighteen-year-old Patricia Baldt Contreras is a local aspiring archeologist who desperately wants to help excavate the site. She must hide her plans from her father, a reactionary coffee farmer who is afraid that the progressive government will give away his land to the poor. When the diggers unearth human bones at the site, controversy threatens to end Pablo’s search. As they all soon discover, however, history is not dead in the ground: It is erupting around them. Garzon’s deliberative prose paints the characters with precision and complexity: “[Meg] photographed, sketched, and cataloged artifacts, and her intuitions were sound. She had assured Patricia that she, Pablo, and the workers all contributed equally to the success of the dig, but the girl had clearly figured out how marginalized Meg was. An appendage.” The novel does an excellent job rooting its characters and events within the context of Guatemala before an American-backed coup, and it features some fun historical fiction flourishes. (Ernesto “Che” Guevara is a supporting character.) The plot develops slowly, but the writing keeps the reader engaged. It is an immersive story not only of the tension between cultures, but of the roles that women often find themselves trapped in, and the risks they take in order to escape them.
An engaging novel that digs deep into mid-20th-century Guatemala.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5439-9483-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2020
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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