Midlife chick lit in verse that contains an equal measure of clever lines and clinkers.
Poet-novelist Sones, whose previous work was aimed at teens (What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know, 2007, etc.), focuses on their moms in her newest verse novel about the crises facing a woman as she turns 50.
The poems, most no more than a page, follow California poet Holly as she struggles to finish her book of poetry. Holly is anxiety-ridden, not only because she can’t avoid the physical “skidmarks” of age as she approaches 50, but also because her adored only daughter Sam is a high-school senior getting ready to leave Holly and her artist husband Michael empty-nesters. Then Holly’s loving and beloved mother’s health begins to fail in Cleveland, and guilt-ridden Holly must manage her medical care from afar. After a remarkably easy transition—Sam is the kind of fictional girl who skips a party with her friends to bake brownies (recipe included) for her grandmother and then snuggles up to watch TV with her mom—Sam heads off to college. Suddenly Holly’s marriage to Michael seems less than rock solid. First she suspects he is having an affair with one of her friends, though in classic sitcom plotting he’s actually been meeting with the other woman because she runs an animal shelter and he’s planning to surprise Holly with a new kitty. Then visiting her mother, Holly is tempted by but resists sexual advances from her mother’s doctor. When Michael is rushed to the hospital in great pain, his kidney stones become Holly’s poetic metaphor for their minor marital problems. Soon Holly’s mom is doing better, Sam is calling home frequently from college on the East Coast, and Holly’s editor loves her finished book. (Surprisingly for a poet married to an artist, one problem Holly doesn’t seem to have is financial; there are shopping sprees to the store nicely marketed in the title and no worries about where Sam’s tuition will come from.)
Midlife chick lit in verse that contains an equal measure of clever lines and clinkers.Pub Date: April 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202467-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
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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