Like its main character, appealing, sweet, old-fashioned—and, at heart, very sad.
An unassuming yet magnetic older woman becomes possessed by the notion of acquiring an Oscar de la Renta dress.
This droll little fairy tale of a novel by fashion writer Norwich (Learning to Drive, 1996, etc.) tells the story of Emilia Brown, known exclusively as Mrs. Brown, a quiet, serious, hardworking woman of 66 who has lived all her life in the small town of Ashville, Rhode Island, est. 1649. Mrs. Brown “was not a career woman”—her current jobs are cleaning a beauty parlor and taking in mending—“avoided excesses of any sort,” “tried never to let a tear drop,” and “didn’t have a bucket list.” Yet despite her plain Yankee exterior, she has a dignity and luminosity of spirit that draws people to her, at least those people with the sensitivity to see what lies behind the wren’s feathers. The catty beauticians in her salon are not in this group. Among Mrs. Brown’s devoted fans are her 23-year-old tenant, Alice, a thoroughly modern girl from Vancouver who wears motorcycle boots, tight jeans, and a T-shirt that says I’LL STOP WEARING BLACK WHEN THEY INVENT A DARKER COLOR; a famous biracial fashion model named Florida James, staying with Mrs. Brown while she finishes up at the local college; and a fashionista named Rachel Ames, who was the personal assistant to the great lady of Ashville until her death. This great lady, Mrs. Groton, was Mrs. Brown’s lifelong idol, and she eagerly signs up for the job of helping inventory her house for the estate auction. In the process, she sees a dress, a ladylike black sheath with a jacket, that she becomes obsessed with, refocusing her life around the plan of amassing thousands of dollars and traveling to New York to get it. What remains a mystery until the very end of the novel is the occasion for which she needs such a thing. As Alice thinks to herself one night after the two have their regular evening visit, “I may not always understand [her],” but “she’s my Mrs. Brown.”
Like its main character, appealing, sweet, old-fashioned—and, at heart, very sad.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4423-8607-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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