Murphy sometimes recalls the exurban tribulations and titillations of Peter De Vries—albeit without all the puns—in a...
An offbeat thriller sets a serial killer loose among young swimmers in New England and tests the reader’s tolerance for textual quirks.
Countless sentences begin “This is,” as Murphy (The Call, 2011, etc.) assumes the voice of a preschool teacher to detail the world of pre-college swimming, where hours of repetitive practice are distilled in seconds of competition monitored by anxious parents. Murphy also presents the thoughts of swim-mom Annie in what for this woman is the aptly self-conscious “you” of the second person. Stalking all the damp, dewy young flesh is a serial killer who has been on a break for many years when he suddenly decides to renew his slaughter. Revealed early in the book, he is craftily tied to a handsome swim dad’s college fling. Other flings are mulled as Handsome’s wife, Chris, suspects him of present-day dalliance. She seeks solace from Annie, who becomes infatuated with Handsome between bouts of revisiting her brother’s suicide. As one slashed girl surfaces and more victims are expected, Murphy seasons the rising tension with humor, especially through a nicely sketched overbearing busybody who knows everything except how close she is to the killer. The author also manages to suggest with the repetition of “This is” the rhythm of bedside readings in childhood, reflecting innocence lost in more than one way for this unfairy tale, not to mention the constant refrain of all those laps up and down the pool. Even for readers who might still hear an annoying tic, the book’s other, straightforward writing is often more than a cut above the thriller norm.
Murphy sometimes recalls the exurban tribulations and titillations of Peter De Vries—albeit without all the puns—in a different sort of murder yarn that boasts twists in both the style and the plot.Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-229490-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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