Much déjà vu about nothing.
Rose (The Book of Lost Fragrances, 2012, etc.) fails to breathe new life into her latest offering, which includes themes and characters introduced in previous stories and rehashes discussions about reincarnation, Jungian psychology and olfactory sensations.
Mythologist Jac L’Etoile, a woman with a troubled past, is contacted by former fellow mental patient Theo Gaspard, who also has a troubled past. Theo’s family home is on the Isle of Jersey, and Theo invites Jac to the island to view some mysterious discoveries he’s made. Against her therapist’s wishes, Jac journeys to the island, where she meets Theo’s elderly aunts, both with—what else?—troubled pasts, and Ash, Theo’s estranged and, yes, troubled brother. In the 1850s, the Isle of Jersey becomes Victor Hugo’s residence-in-exile and Hugo, troubled by his daughter Didine’s death, becomes obsessed with trying to communicate with her through séances. He also smokes hashish, which could explain his claim that he communicates with many of history’s greatest souls, including Jesus and Shakespeare. One evening, Hugo meets Fantine, a mysterious, troubled young woman from a family of perfumers who recently lost a child, and he becomes obsessed with her. Switch to 56 B.C., when a tribe of Druids also occupies the Isles—right on the property belonging to Theo. Owain, the high priest, his wife and child live a pretty normal Druid life until he and the other priests have troubling visions that they believe Owain must fulfill in order to save the tribe. Meanwhile, in 1855, Hugo’s having his own problems: He’s wrangling with the Shadow of the Sepulcher, aka Lucifer, who’s made him a pretty sweet offer. And then there’s Jac in present-day life: She’s suffering dizzy spells, being bombarded by different smells, experiencing overwhelming feelings of dread and calling out weird names. One of the aunts ties a ribbon around her wrist to keep Jac from slipping away to heaven-knows-where, and it seems to do the trick. As the author switches back and forth between the very distant past, the sort-of-distant past and the present, she finally connects all the troubled characters (long after the reader’s managed to do so) and brings the book to a close—but not before Jac, her hosts and therapists have protracted discussions about reincarnation and the collective unconscious.
Much déjà vu about nothing.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2150-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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