A brisk, humorous story of a middle-aged couple in an unmoored marriage, stumbling toward safe harbor.
A long-term relationship gone stale, a summer of searching, celebrity cameos, and a comic sensibility.
Claire, a 51-year-old massage therapist and energy healer, is fed up with husband Wally’s immaturity. “Scratch the surface of any man and you’ll find a boy,” notes her good friend Roz. Fifty-five-year-old Wally has unfulfilled dreams that feel urgent to him; unfortunately, he has little initiative to realize those dreams, which include writing a novel. After he receives a head injury and apparent visitations from an unexpected supernatural muse and some sexual adventures, readers won’t be sure if the two will be able to make things work together—or, for that matter, on their own. The main characters are most appealing during introspective moments, as readers learn what they once saw in each other and what they now hope for themselves. The pace is consistent and the tone light, although Lincoln overdoes the metaphors at times; Claire thinks about her life’s lack of “balance” and “fluidity” while practicing tai chi, for instance, and feels “adrift” on a canoe trip gone wrong. However, fun cameos by Terry Gross from National Public Radio, along with another surprise guest, may win readers over. The supporting cast keeps the subplots moving, and the couple’s activities, including attempting to date other people, volunteering at a dog rescue, and attending golf tournaments, prevent the story from becoming overly unfocused. Gus, a philosophical dog who communicates eloquently—and telepathically—with mildly psychic Claire, and Sifu, a dojo master, provide cosmic and comic grounding to the couple’s quest for connection. For better or worse, readers may come away with the feeling that these two lost souls might just deserve each other.
A brisk, humorous story of a middle-aged couple in an unmoored marriage, stumbling toward safe harbor.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781578691388
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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