by T. Greenwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2009
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2018
A tour de force.
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New York Times Bestseller
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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