Strangely compelling through the middle pages, but Adler’s prose is as threadbare as ever.
Adler returns with a sequel to The War of the Roses (1981), offering another generation of nasty stick figures in foreseeable sentences.
It may or may not be a good thing that the action here never gets quite as excruciating as in its predecessor, where divorcing parents battled literally to the death for possession of their stunningly restored house on DC’s Embassy Row. Years later, young Josh Rose, son of the deceased Jonathan and Barbara, marries aggressive ex-lawyer Victoria, the toweringly dysfunctional child of a bitter mother who drove her husband into abandoning them and whose attitude toward men is “Never near when you need them, are they?” Josh and Victoria teach offspring Michael and Emily not to lie, but when Michael is accused repeatedly of stealing Milky Ways from hysterical and lisping fellow student Madeline, can they believe his denials? Victoria’s ire rises stormlike over the child’s private school. Adler sets us up for what bodes to be a Victoria-and-Josh repeat of Jonathan and Barbara’s mortal match, but it doesn’t work out that way. Josh, creative director at an ad agency, finds himself seduced by Angela Bocci, a brilliant Italian artist with two kids and a husband. He can’t bear the strain and breaks up with her after six months, but Angela’s thuggish spouse Dominic decides to blackmail him for $500,000. When Victoria hears about this, she takes Dominic to pieces. Meanwhile, Gordon Tatum, head of Michael’s school, promises to expel the boy unless Victoria blows him. Josh and Victoria head toward divorce, but the kids will have final say about that. And, of course, Josh must discover Victoria’s deed with Tatum.
Strangely compelling through the middle pages, but Adler’s prose is as threadbare as ever.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-4022-0197-4
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
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
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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