A deliciously convoluted tale of layered deceptions.
Lowkis’ twisty debut plays with the conventions of the gothic novel in a tale that pits two ambitious sisters against each other.
In mid-19th century Paris, Sylvie and Charlotte Mothe have grown up practicing the art of fleecing their wealthy neighbors by pretending to be mediums. But when their compassionate mother dies, leaving them in the care of their alcoholic father, Sylvie, the elder sister, sets her sights on landing a rich husband, abandoning Charlotte in the process. When Charlotte approaches Sylvie with a proposal for a final con, this one involving a ghost supposedly haunting the dissolute de Jacquinot family, Sylvie resists at first but ultimately can’t resist using the skills she has developed, only to begin to wonder whether the ghost they are facing is more real than she suspected. Midway through the novel, Lowkis switches from Sylvie’s point of view to Charlotte’s and backtracks in time, bringing a surprising new perspective to the events that have transpired. A romantic attraction between Charlotte and the youngest member of the de Jacquinot family, the determined Florence, adds a spicy complication to the seances, which focus on the alleged appearance and ghostly actions of Florence’s departed great-aunt Sabine, who died during the Revolution. While the story drags a bit as it approaches the finish line, and a lurid ending changes its darkly comic tone, readers should enjoy the juicy details of post-Revolution Paris, the insider information on how to conduct a haunting, the echoes of Perrault’s fairy tales—including the one about a good sister and a bad one that gives the novel its title—and the complicated relationship between the two sisters, the details of whose history emerges along with that of their wealthier targets.
A deliciously convoluted tale of layered deceptions.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781668024959
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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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