If you like this sort of thing, you’ll dive in and never look back.
The world’s most competent butler navigates a storm of romantic and financial complications among the British elite.
Sykes gives Kevin Kwan a run for his money in this saga of obscene wealth, designer outfits, miniature dog breeds, and over-the-top landscaping set in Oxfordshire, a rural area of vast estates now mostly in the hands of the nouveau riche. Ian Palmer, a summa cum laude graduate of the Greycoats’ Butler Institute in Mayfair, is known not just for his impeccable outfits, his Colin-Firth-in-A-Single-Man eyeglasses, and his vintage Gucci loafer collection, but for his superhuman ability to manage his employers’ lives. His boss, Tata Hawkins, needs his help as never before since her businessman husband, Bryan, has opened a spot in his in-house mentoring program to a “bikini influencer” named Tallulah de Sanchez (“twenty-six, looked thirty-six due to addiction to eyelash extensions and lip fillers”) and her dog, Pikachu. (As Kwan does with educational resumes, Sykes intros each character with a beady-eyed assessment of their real and apparent ages.) Infuriated by finding a receipt in Bryan’s office for a piece of jewelry that certainly wasn’t a gift for her, Tata has taken her beloved factotum and her daughter, Minty, and decamped to a guesthouse on the property, creating a tsunami of snarky gossip and leaving Ian with nowhere appropriate to store his loafer collection. Of course the solution involves throwing a massive party—supposedly an intimate “Kitchen Supper”—to welcome the area’s newest arriviste, an American named Selby Fairfax, and naturally this causes Tata’s friends to compete by throwing their own parties, one of which is a hilariously elaborate equestrian event called a hack. Poor Selby has had to flee New York after her husband very publicly left her for his boyfriend, but Sykes thoughtfully provides her with a Mr. Darcy, a hot, rich farmer who storms into the story when her children accidentally kill his cow. Crazy Rich Brits may not have the amazing cuisine of their Asian counterparts, but they are just as scheming, fabulous, and fun to read about.
If you like this sort of thing, you’ll dive in and never look back.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780062429087
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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