A compassionate and warm family drama filled to the brim with characters who feel like old friends.
A traditional family trip is fraught with complications in Francis’ (Three Good Things, 2013) second novel.
Each summer, the Herington family comes together at their Cape Cod home to gather more memories to add to their old notebook, “The Book of Summer.” This July, however, the situation is a bit more complicated. Each sister—Maggie, Jess, and Virgie—has been fumbling through her own hectic life, and their parents, Arthur and Gloria, are recently divorced. Eldest sister Maggie is struggling to maintain order and serenity in the house and feels pulled in countless directions to keep up with the needs of her family. Her twin, Jess, is dissatisfied in her marriage, feeling like she no longer connects with her husband, Tim. Things have gotten so bad between them that she's slipped into an emotional affair with a neighbor. Virgie, the baby of the family, is feeling frustrated with her high-stress job as a television news anchor in Seattle and is aggravated when she's passed over for a major story. Arthur, their father, is exhibiting signs of memory loss and has begun to demonstrate a series of bizarre habits since his marriage ended. A mystery writer, he often feels lost as to how to proceed with his latest project and longs for his wife, Gloria, to come back to him. Through some scheduling mishaps, both Arthur and his ex-wife will be vacationing with the girls and their families this summer—along with Gloria’s new boyfriend, Gio. The novel alternates among the perspectives of Maggie, Jess, Virgie, and Arthur as they cope with marital woes, questions of parenthood and career, and Arthur’s declining health and spirits, all while trying to keep their children happy at the beach. Despite the focus being spread over so many characters, Francis has done them justice.
A compassionate and warm family drama filled to the brim with characters who feel like old friends.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6642-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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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