An allusion-heavy story that’s ultimately compelling and absorbing.
In Hagood’s novel, a young aspiring artist loses her father but not before he tells her a long-held secret that sets her on a quest for the truth.
Dylan Cyllene, a Brooklyn-based high school student and amateur artist, is hit with two bombshells: First, she finds out that her beloved father is terminally ill with cancer; second, before he dies, he tells her that he’s not her biological parent. Thus begins a whirlwind tale of Dylan’s search for her birth father and her reparation of a fractured relationship with her mother, an artist whose emotional state is erratic at best. Meanwhile, renowned photographer Simon Ambrogio, whose work also includes monster references, comes to give a lecture to her class. This leads Dylan to new revelations. At the same time, she builds a romantic relationship with fellow student Shay, a girl who shares her love for “filthy creations” of the artistic kind. A massive art installation made of discarded car parts eventually offers clarity to Dylan on all fronts. Hagood’s book is part coming-of-age novel, part mystery, part family drama, and part queer romance; it hits a lot of notes, and most are the right ones. Its title comes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), a favorite of Dylan’s that informs her artwork, and the allusions to that classic work eventually become repetitive. However, Hagood has crafted an engrossing story with vivid characters; Dylan, Shay, and Simon are effectively revealed as artists who are dedicated to a fault, going to extremes for inspiration and creation. At one point, for instance, Shay even jumps into the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge, which gets Dylan’s creativity flowing as she jumps after her: “I felt I might just sink to the bottom. Shay and I could both live down there together, surviving on a diet of only ships.” Other over-the-top plot elements include the repeated use of monster masks and a scene involving a visit to a cockfight, but these are believable in the context of the lives of artists who feel their work so deeply.
An allusion-heavy story that’s ultimately compelling and absorbing.Pub Date: May 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781952335563
Page Count: 254
Publisher: MadHat Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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