A smart take on a familiar genre that, when it stumbles, stumbles admirably.
A kidnapping forces a husband to reconsider his life in Sylvester’s debut, a cross between a literary novel and a thriller.
Although Andres and Marabela Jimenez live in a house that’s “enclosed by cement walls and locked gates,” horror manages to invade their lives when Marabela is kidnapped and ransomed at a price too steep for her husband, owner of a printing company, to afford. For help, he brings in a kidnapping expert named Guillermo, who recently negotiated the ransom for Elena, Andres’ childhood sweetheart. But Elena was held captive for 37 days and returned home broken, unable to return to her old life; is this fate in store for Marabela, too? Sylvester sets her novel in Peru in 1992, against a backdrop of political violence and guerrilla warfare. The country’s public turmoil echoes the private turmoil of the Jimenezes, no example of marital bliss even before the kidnapping. One of the appealing aspects of the novel is that it isn’t really about the negotiations at all. Rather, it’s about Andres reconnecting with neglected aspects of his life: Elena, his family and even Marabela. He becomes hopeful about what might happen when his wife returns. Will they put their relationship back together? Sylvester’s novel is one of great promise, even if it doesn’t cohere. Two-thirds of the way through, it changes shape dramatically—a twist that wants to gesture toward larger concerns but makes the remainder of the novel feel like an overlong epilogue. Nevertheless, Sylvester is a fine writer with a knack for crafting situations that externalize the characters’ internal struggles. (For instance, Andres and Guillermo have to invade Marabela’s darkroom—her last bastion of privacy—to set up a headquarters to handle the negotiations.) Sometimes Sylvester’s language stretches too far, as when a dial tone “is empty, just like [Andres] is,” but her ambition to reach beyond the traditional kidnapping thriller into something richer is commendable.
A smart take on a familiar genre that, when it stumbles, stumbles admirably.Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-26217-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Amazon Publishing/New Harvest
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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