A humane, cleareyed attempt to explore the ripple effects of sexual crime.
“Imagine the person you love and trust becoming a different person overnight. What would you do?” After perpetual Teacher of the Year winner and local “man of distinction” George Woodbury is arrested on multiple charges of sexual misconduct with minors, his wife and children are forced to answer just that question.
Science teacher Woodbury first hit the headlines nearly a decade earlier, when he disarmed a man with a rifle who had entered Avalon Hills prep school with murder in mind. Now, George has become an instant media sensation all over again, this time following the accusations of several female pupils. Having swiftly and unfussily set up this scenario, Canadian novelist Whittall (The Middle Ground, 2010, etc.) chooses to focus not on the alleged crimes but on the repercussions on George’s family: wife Joan, a nurse; bright daughter Sadie, 17; and son Andrew, a lawyer with a boyhood history of being bullied at Avalon. George’s perspective is not included, leaving an obvious vacuum at the heart of the story. Instead Whittall gives voice to the range of sympathy and suspicion from friends and colleagues in this comfortable middle-class community, as well as more extreme responses, like the man who shows up at Joan's house wearing a "Justice for Men and Boys" T-shirt, telling her, "It's the feminists who are going to ruin your husband's life, you know." Joan joins a support group to help deal with the loss of a happy life and beloved partner—all now in the past, whatever the future brings—while Sadie makes her own journey from innocence to experience via a family friend who is secretly writing a novel based on the events. After the novel's busy opening section, the pace slows to allow for the characters' shifts in feeling, eventually reaching a diffused conclusion that makes the memorable point that a story like this never ends.
A humane, cleareyed attempt to explore the ripple effects of sexual crime.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18221-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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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