A lively, idiosyncratic tale of marriage and revolution.
In this debut novel, a man attempts to find love in a West African dictatorship.
In the fictional West African nation of Hasoumiya, there lives a tailor named Zaidou. He remains a bachelor at age 40, though not for lack of trying. The latest object of his affections is Talatou, the owner of a local restaurant with a checkered past. He manages to win her over, but almost as soon as they are engaged, Zaidou begins to have his doubts. Then a new crush enters his life: Zakiyyah, an educated woman 10 years younger who has just returned from the Netherlands. Such a woman would normally have nothing to do with a man like Zaidou, but she recognizes his talent and asks him to help her learn to sew. In exchange, she thinks she can help him sell his clothes in the Netherlands. The plan proves an unexpected success, granting Zaidou a level of wealth and prestige unlike any he’s known before. He even has a chance with Zakiyyah—that is, until Leader Gambo, the violent dictator who rules Hasoumiya, declares an unprecedented five-year ban on all marriages in the country. Zaidou’s fortunes become even darker when he is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Can he escape, set his country right, and finally get a wife, or is he destined to die a bachelor? Bello’s prose has a distant, minimalist quality, almost like a fable: “Zaidou went outside. He walked to the beer parlour that stood close to the brewery. The beer parlour was made of four logs of wood and was roofed by a zinc sheet. A signpost made from a rough plank indicated the name of the enterprise in Hausa—The People’s Drinking Place.” The events are slightly heightened, and while the story isn’t quite funny, there is a lightness to the tone that undercuts the seriousness of Zaidou’s plight. The novel takes some unexpected turns, and an ever expanding cast of characters provides additional tensions. While not entirely satisfying on an emotional level—readers will not feel quite close enough to Zaidou and Zakiyyah for that—the story works well as a yarn, pulling readers ever forward to the next development.
A lively, idiosyncratic tale of marriage and revolution.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4808-5559-5
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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