One does come to agree with the characters that the most likable of the group has been killed off.
A year after the death of their sibling, three surviving sisters are in rough straits.
Nicky Blue was the third of the four Blue sisters and, by everyone’s account, the cream of the crop—even their cold, distant mother had a soft spot for her. Though no one thought of her as a drug addict, Nicky died at 27 of a fentanyl overdose; she had become addicted to painkillers due to the unending torment of endometriosis. But now that they’ve had time to stew over it, each of the survivors can see that she should have known. Avery, the oldest at 33—she basically raised the others due to the disinterest of their mother and the alcoholism of their father—is thought of by everyone as perfect. A lawyer in London, happily married to a loving wife, 10 years sober, she’s actually utterly miserable and has begun to act out in ways that threaten to blow up her life. Bonnie, the second oldest, has already exploded hers—she ditched her career as a world-class boxer and is now likely to lose her job as a bouncer at a club in Los Angeles. Lucky, the baby of the family, is the furthest gone—a supermodel since the age of 15, she’s partying so hard day and night that even the relaxed standards of the fashion workplace can no longer accommodate her. Mellors’ sophomore novel lays a thick foundation of grief, addiction, and self-loathing before bringing these three together in New York to clean out Nicky’s stuff from their childhood apartment, which their heartless mother has decided to sell, and in short order they are just about clawing each others’ eyes out. The bad decisions, bad behavior, and bad news just keep coming until a few positive plot developments in the final chapters, then a fairy-tale epilogue. Maybe it was Mellors’ intention to challenge the reader in this way, but in the end, it seems like a lot of heavy lifting to illustrate well-worn points about sisterhood and addiction.
One does come to agree with the characters that the most likable of the group has been killed off.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723760
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
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