This exploration of loneliness is a feat of lyricism.
Grace Marisola returns to India from the U.S. upon her mother’s death, leaving behind a crumbling marriage, only to discover that her mother has left her a beach house in Madras—and, even more surprisingly, that she has a sister she never knew about, Lucia, who has Down syndrome.
Grace moves Lucia from the institution their mother secretly funded to care for girls with special needs to the secluded beach house she's inherited. Here, on the outskirts of rural life, she tries to cultivate a sibling bond. The novel unfolds from Grace’s first-person perspective and in the present tense, which can sometimes be cumbersome but feels poignant here for the way it creates immediacy in an otherwise meandering tale. Grace’s lonely childhood is newly refracted by Lucia’s existence; she recalls her parents’ story, examining how a couple might decide to allow an institution to raise one of their children and the consequences of that decision on their marriage and the child they kept. Grace’s own marriage is failing because she doesn’t want children and her husband does. Feelings of alienation stemming from her childhood and worry about the fate of the planet, among other things, have led her to choose a life at the edge of the world. She makes her own nuclear family with Lucia and a pack of energetic dogs, a precarious existence at best. Doshi (Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, 2017, etc.) is excellent at conjuring atmosphere, particularly a sense of menace regarding the dangers that confront women in both rural and cosmopolitan India. She needs few words to breathe life into her characters and setting, the stars of the story. Grace can be judgmental and mean, but Doshi has also endowed her with intelligence and sensitivity. All of these qualities make Grace a worthy prism for the profound questions of what it means to belong to a family and a community.
This exploration of loneliness is a feat of lyricism.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00523-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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
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