Some readers will love Nettel's penetrating gaze while others may wish it were aimed at subjects less scatological.
In this slight collection of stories, first published in Spanish in 2008, the Mexican writer Nettel (After the Winter, 2018, etc.) plumbs the depths of human perversion.
One character haunts restaurant toilets, becoming obsessed with a strange woman simply based on the smell of her poo ("Petals"); another peeps on her neighbor, getting a voyeuristic thrill from watching him masturbate while his date sits in another room ("Through Shades"); a third character can't give up her obsessive-compulsive tendency to pluck hair from all over her body, even when it costs her intimacy ("Bezoar"). Too often, weirdness feels overdetermined in these stories, as though the point is to see what happens when you reduce a person to one disgusting habit or strange passion. Still, there are some successes: In "Bonsai," the narrator's secret obsession with a garden is a useful vehicle to explore how keeping secrets can be estranging. The husband's weekly visits to the greenhouse, which his wife once loved, persuade him that he's a cactus and she's a climbing vine, two plants that are too different to live together. While Nettel's odd characters unnerve, her insights are nervy and occasionally brilliant. Describing her mother's fear of dying, one character says, "When your mother is afraid it's as if suddenly she can no longer feed you, as if, right this minute, she'd take her breast out of your mouth." Or as the narrator of "Bezoar" observes about her mania: "When one has allowed oneself to be controlled for so long by actions one does not recognize as one's own...when one has loosened the sphincter of one's willpower...one knows even less if one's actions could be considered ‘irresponsible.’ "
Some readers will love Nettel's penetrating gaze while others may wish it were aimed at subjects less scatological.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60980-958-4
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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