Overwrought context obscures a sweetly told love story.
Ghosts of his heartbreaking past visit a railroad worker in rural New England.
A life marked by tragedy is the cornerstone of this Northern Gothic by Greenwood (Undressing the Moon, 2002, etc.). Narrator Harper Montgomery is a gloomy figure, beset by melancholy and struggling to raise his young daughter Shelly in a cracker-box apartment in the small town where he’s lived most of his life. He’s haunted, not only by the horrific wreck that killed his wife Betsy 12 years earlier, in 1968, but also by his involvement in a brutal crime referred to fleetingly in cryptic bridging segments. Harper’s dismal life working at the freight office of the railroad station in Two Rivers, Vt., is interrupted by a terrible train crash. From the wreckage, Harper rescues a pregnant adolescent, “a girl with skin the color of blackberries,” and takes her into his home against his better instincts. The terrified girl calls herself Marguerite Dufresne and claims to be fleeing to Canada after being raped in her Southern hometown. From this bleak starting point, Greenwood knits a densely woven sequence of events that finds Harper recounting his love affair with Betsy Parker throughout the ’60s as well as the startling (and often implausible) misfortunes that befall their families, including the suicide of Betsy’s mentally ill mother and a fire that devastates Harper’s family. Along the way, he unravels the mystery of Marguerite’s origins and begs forgiveness for the long-ago racial violation that spurred the suicide of one of Harper’s childhood friends. Greenwood’s novel features a satisfyingly complex romance and admirable storytelling momentum, but its fractured swing between passion and heartbreak make it a tough read. By the time the syrupy finale rolls around, the woebegone plight of its pitiful narrator has grown tedious.
Overwrought context obscures a sweetly told love story.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7582-2877-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2008
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
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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