The final pages dangle a plethora of loose ends, but they’re unlikely to bother readers gripped by the novel’s strong...
After a mild-mannered family-dramedy debut (The Arrivals, 2011), Moore gets way more intense in a novel that mingles the stories of a cyberbullied high school student, a guilt-ridden archivist and an Irish maid in the 1920s.
It’s unusual for a 13-year-old to be poking around the Massachusetts Archives, especially since she’s come to Boston on the bus all the way from Newburyport. But what really attracts Kathleen Lynch’s attention to Natalie Gallagher is that the girl reminds Kathleen of her own daughter Susannah, who got involved in drugs and vanished just before graduating from high school some 10 years ago. Natalie’s under pressure too; Kathleen sees a vaguely threatening text on the girl’s dropped cell phone, and we quickly learn that Natalie is being bullied by her former BFF Hannah Morgan and Hannah’s new pal, the extremely nasty Taylor Grant. Natalie’s mother, who’s gone practically catatonic since her husband moved out, is in no shape to protect her daughter, and Kathleen’s well-meaning attempts to help backfire. A second plot unfolds in the notebook Natalie found in the basement of her family’s house and brought to the Archives; it details Bridget O’Connell’s experiences in 1925-1926 as a maid to Newburyport’s Turner family. Moore’s storytelling skills are evident as the tension builds on both fronts. Bridget suffers demeaning treatment from Mrs. Turner and winds up in bed with Dr. Turner, with disastrous consequences. Taylor’s persecution escalates, and Natalie feels increasingly isolated as her mother buries herself in work, her father takes a vacation with his new girlfriend, and Kathleen is distracted by a friend whose lover is caught in the Haitian earthquake. Moore is equally skillful in capturing the class tensions of the early 20th century and the scary cruelty of teenage girls amplified by 21st-century technology.
The final pages dangle a plethora of loose ends, but they’re unlikely to bother readers gripped by the novel’s strong emotional content.Pub Date: May 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-09769-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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