Ultimately, a rewarding, emotionally satisfying read. A young woman runs from her talent and finds fulfillment after...
In this debut novel, playwright and director Angell's musical theater background informs the story of Charlotte, a young Manhattanite who's given up composing music to become a wealthy family's babysitter.
The novel's narrative lynchpin is revealed in its first paragraph: Gretchen McLean, mother of two young sons, "dies without warning" on a dark, rainy day. Even before the tragedy, Charlotte's attachment to the McLean boys and lack of boundaries with Gretchen affects her personal life—when a grad school friend shows up on her front porch with good news, she can't be happy for him, and she chooses to work late rather than spend time with him. Her new intimacy with the McLeans takes over—together, she and Gretchen use binoculars to spy on a famous neighbor, while all her interactions with her own family take place over the phone. Charlotte's narration is so focused and emotionally charged in each moment that it's easy to forget we're reading up to a tragic death. After being with the family in the hospital waiting room, she takes a brief break before jumping in to be the boys' main caregiver, working at an unsustainable pace to do the job their mother couldn't do on her own. As a caregiver for Matthew and George, Charlotte doesn't fit in with the nannies or mothers who line up to gather children from the preschool, but that doesn't stop her from embracing her new role. She uses her ukulele and her composing skills to entertain the boys and their friends. Throughout, the story moves backward and forward in time, from the day before Gretchen's death to Charlotte's first day babysitting two years prior to her time as a graduate student and the professional betrayal that killed her interest in writing music to the weeks and months after Gretchen's death. The back and forth effectively heightens drama, but at times grows tedious in a novel of this length.
Ultimately, a rewarding, emotionally satisfying read. A young woman runs from her talent and finds fulfillment after learning that it never left her, even as she immerses herself in another woman's world.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-401-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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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