Not one of Hegi’s best, but this thoughtful writer’s work always merits attention.
A folklore-inflected tale focused on three mothers, a highly unusual group of nuns, and a chorus of Old Women who comment on everything.
The main narrative unfolds in the wake of a freak wave that breaks over the beach on the island of Nordstrand in August 1878, sweeping away Lotte and Martin Jansen’s three oldest children. Devastated and even unable to love their remaining baby, Wilhelm, Martin literally runs away with the circus, in this case the Ludwig Zirkus, a traveling band of free spirits in the harshly judgmental society of 19th-century Germany. Among its denizens is Sabine, abandoned by her husband and fiercely protective of her developmentally disabled daughter. Another Nordstrand refuge for misfits is the St. Margaret Home, founded by art-loving Sister Hildegunde, where nuns care for unmarried pregnant girls with love and without judgment. Grieving for her newborn given up for adoption, 11-year-old Tilli becomes Wilhelm’s wet nurse while he and his near-catatonic mother are temporarily staying with the nuns, and her devotion becomes an issue with Lotte. That’s a lot of plot to launch a novel, particularly since Hegi intersperses Sabine’s and St. Margaret’s backstories in chapters dating back to 1842. The Old Women’s interjections sometimes seem unnecessary, though it’s a pleasure to hear of them giving a brutal husband his comeuppance. Hegi’s contrast between the censorious, sanctimonious pillars of society and the kind, tolerant nuns and circus folk is a bit pat, particularly in both groups’ anachronistic acceptance of open homosexuality. The vaguely magical realist elements aren’t a strong point for this author, who has excelled in probing the moral complexities of both personal and political relations in such previous works as Children and Fire (2011) and Salt Dancers (1995). Still, her characters in this less satisfying book are still full-bodied, and their various conflicts lead to tender final resolutions for the three protagonists.
Not one of Hegi’s best, but this thoughtful writer’s work always merits attention.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-15682-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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
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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