A book to read right now.
Two generations of displacement, loss, and star-crossed love in Tel Aviv, Brooklyn, and Kafr Ma’an, a village that no longer exists.
Bukai’s timely debut opens shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, when Tamar Abadi learns that her sister-in-law, Hadas, has been killed by a gunman outside the house where she grew up in the village of Kafr Ma’an, since then more or less obliterated by the Israeli government. But what was she doing there? Hadas and her brother—Tamar’s husband, Salim—are Mizrahi Jews originally from Damascus, Syria; they were settled in Kafr Ma’an by the Israeli government on the heels of the mass displacement of the town’s Arab villagers in 1948. At the heart of this book is a tragic romance between an Arab and a Jew who lived in the same house at different times, and that doomed love is the first of several that shape the story. Devastated by the death of his sister, Salim makes the unilateral decision to move his family to the United States. Tamar’s feeling that it will not go well proves well-founded; when the Mahmoudis, a Palestinian family formerly of Jaffa, moves in upstairs, Tamar’s daughter falls in love with their son and all the old chickens come home to roost. The story moves forward to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Tamar has the chance to redeem herself for some of the mistakes she has made. Bukai depicts not just the tensions between Arabs and Jews, but also between the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jewish communities, and the trouble that continues to roil life in the American so-called melting pot. Shying away from villains and heroes, the novel creates sympathy for a spectrum of individuals trapped by tribalism, land grabs, heartless government actions, and economics.
A book to read right now.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781953002464
Page Count: -
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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