Maynard’s (After Her, 2013, etc.) expert narration and plotting plant the seeds for the explosive events at the end of her...
With friends like these….
“I had never been inside a house like the Havillands’.…There was so much evidence of life in the place—life and warmth. All of it seeming to emanate directly from Ava, as clearly as if the house were a body and she its heart.” Helen, a struggling divorcée who's lost custody of her son after a drunken driving arrest, is befriended by a wealthy couple at an art opening where she's working for the caterer. Ava Havilland, who's in a wheelchair due to some mysterious event in the past, takes up Helen with a passion, buying her gifts, bringing her to restaurants, lending her clothes, thoroughly involving her in the elegant social life she shares with her investor husband, Swift. The Havillands begin to fill the miserable vacancy in Helen’s days and nights left by the absence of her son, Ollie, and of her old friend Mr. Wine Bottle (she has not had a drink since the night of her arrest). Then, luckily, Ollie’s dad begins to allow the boy to spend more time with her. Ollie, too, falls in love with the Havillands and their largesse, particularly with Swift, who gives him hearty doses of the masculine attention he hasn’t been getting much of from his own father. “ ‘Is that guy a superhero or something?’ he asked me. ‘You could say that,’ I said.” But the Havillands’ glow is soon to dim. As they undercut Helen’s new romance with an accountant they deem a bore, as that very accountant begins to pore through the public records of their dog rescue foundation, as they continually harp on the amazingness of their sex life (to the point that Helen feels compelled to google "paraplegic sex"), it's clear that a very big reversal lies in wait.
Maynard’s (After Her, 2013, etc.) expert narration and plotting plant the seeds for the explosive events at the end of her tale.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-225764-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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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