A powerful novel and a timely one.
A modern-day Antigone set against political tensions in London, Shamsie’s latest is a haunting and arrestingly current portrait of two families forever caught in the insurmountable gap between love and country, loyalty and desire.
Long the caretaker of her younger twin siblings, Isma Pasha—free at last—accepts an invitation from her mentor to trade London for Amherst to finally earn her long-deferred sociology Ph.D. But even in America, she cannot forget her siblings: Aneeka, feisty and beautiful in London; and Parvaiz, who has disappeared into Syria, following in the footsteps of the jihadi father he never knew. Britain, however, is not as far away as it seems, and it is in a Massachusetts cafe that Isma—serious, studious—sees a face as familiar as it is unlikely: Eamonn Lone, whose politico father has made his career winning white votes by denouncing the “backwardness” of British Muslims. This is where it might become a campus novel, a complicated but gentle love story between two expats with warring families abroad. But it doesn’t. For one thing, it’s not Isma Eamonn loves; it’s Aneeka, whom he meets back in London while running an errand on Isma's behalf. Within hours, the two begin a secretive romance, but it is Aneeka's brother, Parvaiz, trapped now at a jihadi camp in Raqqa and desperate to come home, who occupies her thoughts. With all the stakes of the original, two-time Orange Prize nominee Shamsie (A God in Every Stone, 2014, etc.) has written an explosive novel with big questions about the nature of justice, defiance, and love. Though its characters are trembling with humanity writ large—all of them are tragic figures—they don’t quite come alive, remaining Grecian archetypes, dramatic embodiments of powerful ideas. As a result, despite its obvious power, the book remains emotionally disconnected, unsettling—moving, even—but poetically removed, as though a dance behind glass.
A powerful novel and a timely one.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1768-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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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