A thoughtful tale of loyalty and friendship, family dynamics and human nature, and the cancer of buried truths.
In a small-town cul-de-sac in rural England, preteen Grace and her friend Tilly set out to find God. What they unknowingly uncover is an ugly neighborhood secret.
Cannon’s debut novel opens with the disappearance of the avenue’s friendliest resident, Mrs. Creasey. Puzzled and worried, Grace approaches the church vicar, who responds with cliché—God knows everyone’s whereabouts. As Grace and Tilly search, Cannon’s story is driven by the two girls intruding into an adult world, sometimes tentatively, sometimes brazenly. The novel is primarily set in the scorching summer of 1976, with flashbacks to events in 1967. The two threads merge to create an ominous, near-threatening aura, an oblique narrative haunted by things unsaid and shadowed references. Precocious Grace and fragile Tilly are well-nuanced protagonists, with a majority of chapters told from Grace’s point of view. Cannon gives Grace a perceptive, insightful personality, as when she walks through a cemetery feeling "all the bones that were buried there had made wisdom grow in the soil" or when she and Tilly approach a schoolyard "where we dissolved into a spill of other children." Although dominated by Grace, Tilly is strong enough to be kinder and more empathetic. Adults scurry through the story, with blowsy Sheila Dakin forever sunning herself on her front lawn or the young widower Eric Lamb constantly nipping at a perfect garden or Walter Bishop resting uneasily at the heart of the secret. Ripe with symbolism and metaphor—hypocrisy and rationalization reign when Tilly discovers Drainpipe Jesus, an apparition—Cannon’s sometimes-amorphous novel is a subjective sociological study with the air of a cozy mystery.
A thoughtful tale of loyalty and friendship, family dynamics and human nature, and the cancer of buried truths.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2189-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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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