Less schematic and more down to earth than her first novel, Diffenbaugh’s latest confirms her gift for creating shrewd,...
Question: What kind of parent leaves her two children home alone while she takes off in pursuit of her own mother, who's heading back to Mexico?
Answer: A parent like Letty Espinosa, the troubled heroine of Diffenbaugh’s (The Language of Flowers, 2011) second novel, who suddenly finds herself flying solo and unready to cope. Love and upbringing, the core themes of Diffenbaugh’s bestselling debut, also drive her tightly constructed new novel, which uses its compelling opening to establish Letty’s fecklessness, her 14-year-old son Alex’s prematurely grown-up sense of responsibility, and 6-year-old daughter Luna’s needs. Without her own parents, who have been doing all the child care up till now but whose return to Mexico turns out to be permanent, single mother Letty is going to have to juggle the children, work, and housekeeping by herself for the first time, and to start with, it doesn’t go well. But Letty’s doubts give way to hope as she switches the children to a better school in San Francisco (admittedly, using a false address) and learns from helpful colleague Rick how to mix cocktails that increase her bartending tips. Letty’s story is paralleled with Alex’s: he’s a clever teenager struggling to avoid his mother’s mistakes while falling for classmate Yesenia and coming to know the father Letty hid from him his whole life. With its hardscrabble setting and undocumented characters, Diffenbaugh’s latest is less overtly romantic than her first; it's strong on social issues but sometimes dragged down by a protagonist whose tendency toward self-criticism can be tiring. The tidy plot and satisfying storytelling are winning, though, and ultimately Diffenbaugh delivers a heartwarming journey that mixes redemption and optimistic insight in equal measure.
Less schematic and more down to earth than her first novel, Diffenbaugh’s latest confirms her gift for creating shrewd, sympathetic charmers.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-39231-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
A tour de force.
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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