A gorgeously spun and deftly told tale.
The Laguna family is cursed. Generation after generation of women fall hopelessly in love and bear only daughters, who, in time, suffer their own hopeless loves.
Young-adult author Barrio offers her first novel for adults. Imbued with magical realism, Barrio’s tale of lost loves sparkles. In the fall of 1897, a handsome Andalusian landowner arrives in the small Castilian town to hunt, but before he can chase the first stag, he is caught himself by the golden eyes of Clara Laguna. Her mother is the town witch, renowned for making protective amulets, repairing hymens and predicting the future by throwing cat bones. Undaunted by the townspeople who urge him to stay away from the cursed family, the Andalusian instead embarks on an impassioned love affair. Clara’s mother encourages the affair but discourages Clara’s hopes of marriage, even when he returns the following year. She’s right, of course. The Andalusian abandons Clara, leaving her pregnant with yet another Laguna girl. He also leaves her with the means to exact a strange revenge: Clara turns the house he gave her into a brothel. Behind the house grows a magical garden, lush with roses and tomatoes that defy the cycle of seasons. Named the Scarlet Manor, the house itself attracts not only clients eager to have the golden-eyed Clara, but also a bearded woman, who escapes the circus to become Clara’s enamored cook, and a wild-eyed priest, who bewitches his congregation with sermons born of war. The Laguna women’s saga continues through Clara’s daughter and granddaughter, until at last a boy is born into the family. Yet the curse may still have a few tricks to play.
A gorgeously spun and deftly told tale.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-66119-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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