In this odd and lovely story, Jewell makes believable the connection between these strangers, bound by biology and longing.
Filled with heart and humor, this latest from British bestseller Jewell raises all those big questions about identity, family and fitting in.
What if your father was a sperm donor and you had unknown siblings out there. Would you want to know them? This is the question three Londoners have to confront in this poignant novel. Twenty-nine-year-old Lydia lives in a mansion in St. John’s Wood thanks to a clever chemical invention she sold for millions. She lives a minimal existence with minimalist furniture (plus a cat, housekeeper and personal trainer so perfect-looking he must be gay). This shiny life does little to make up for the wretchedness of her poor Welsh childhood: Her mother, Glenys, used a sperm donor when she sensed her macho husband, Trevor, was infertile, but after her mysterious death, Trevor despised the daughter he suspected wasn’t his. Out of the blue, Lydia receives an anonymous package that tells her she was conceived by a sperm donor—shocking yet somehow vindicating news; she never felt she belonged. She finds a website that tracks donor siblings and there discovers Dean and Robyn. Dean is a 21-year-old sad sack and screw-up. After his girlfriend dies giving birth to their daughter, Dean’s response is to run from the hospital and get high. But in his ongoing stupor, he does manage to get on the donor sibling registry and finds Lydia. The two meet—both loners in possession of startling good looks—and feel immediately at home. Last in line is Robyn who, unlike Dean and Lydia, has two loving parents and a happy life (she’s a gorgeous med student) but is driven to the registry because she has an irrational fear that her boyfriend—soul mate really—may be her brother. Meanwhile, a man is dying in a hospice, wishing he had made more of his life and confessing to his friend that he has children out there—children she could find for him.
In this odd and lovely story, Jewell makes believable the connection between these strangers, bound by biology and longing.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0911-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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