An appealing debut novel despite a few missteps.
An ex-actress and her son trek across America, hitting comics conventions along the way in Proehl’s (Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin, 2008) first novel.
Six years ago, Valerie Torrey was the star of Anomaly, an X-Files–like sci-fi TV show about two time-travel agents, which has obsessive fans. When an unimaginable tragedy struck, Valerie took her son, Alex, and fled LA for New York, leaving her show and her co-star husband, Andrew Rhodes, behind. Now, she and 9-year-old Alex are headed back across the country to meet with Andrew, and as they travel, the story deftly weaves past and present events until the full account of what happened years earlier is revealed. Along the way, Valerie makes appearances at comic-book conventions, where she meets Gail, a comics writer who draws attention to gender inequality, and Brett, a struggling illustrator. Proehl’s observations about convention life are especially keen and insightful without being sneering or belittling. But by trying to appeal to comics fans and nonfans alike, the book sometimes breaks down. For example, in one chapter (conveniently titled “Women in Refrigerators”), Gail discusses at length how comics creators often kill female characters solely to spur male characters to action. While this is an important issue, Proehl just reiterates what most thoughtful comics readers already know, while possibly boring everyone else. The same could be said of Proehl’s roman-à-clef-for-nerds concept: some might enjoy the endless array of thinly veiled icons (e.g. Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, as well as comics writer Gail Simone, to name a few), but those not fully in the know may feel left behind. The prose sometimes lurches into overwrought, look-at-my–MFA style writing, but it’s a testament to Proehl’s talents that these stumbles never detract from the rest of the story, which is a genuine and often moving tale of a mother and her son.
An appealing debut novel despite a few missteps.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-56221-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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