Haunting, spare, and utterly gorgeous, Ginzburg’s novel is a classic of the wife-murders-husband variety.
A murderous account of an unhappy marriage.
A woman kills her husband. “I shot him between the eyes,” she says. Ginzburg’s (Family Lexicon, 2017, etc.) latest novel to appear in English begins and ends with this unvarnished statement. In between is the plainspoken account of an unremarkable, if unhappy, marriage. When the unnamed narrator meets Alberto, she is 26, and he is much older. “I didn’t really like him,” she says, “and the only reason I was pleased to have him come and call on me was that he looked at me with such…sparkling eyes.” They begin to see each other almost every day: Alberto brings her chocolates and books, and they go on walks and to the theater. Eventually, Alberto confesses that he is in love with another woman—a married woman—but still, he and the narrator are married. “Before we were married,” she explains, “Alberto enjoyed my company even if he wasn’t in love with me….He sketched my face in his notebook and listened to what I had to say.” After they’re married, the sketches stop, and they find less and less to say to one other. Soon Alberto starts going on trips, and he’s plainly lying about the reason for them. Eventually, the narrator shoots him. Ginzburg, it’s clear, is a master of the deceptively simple plot. From the beginning, you know how this story will end. Likewise, her prose seems at first to be arid, nearly parched. To say that she’s understated is itself a serious understatement. This slim, swift book—closer in length to a novella than a novel—was first published in Italy in 1947, but it feels chillingly modern in its structure, subject matter, and tone.
Haunting, spare, and utterly gorgeous, Ginzburg’s novel is a classic of the wife-murders-husband variety.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2878-7
Page Count: 96
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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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