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FINDING PLYMM

A Southern gothic tale with a propulsive plot but uneven character development.

In Brookhouse’s novel, the history of a small Southern town comes alive as a newcomer searches for answers about a lost ancestor.

It’s 1990 in Elland,North Carolina, when handsome, scholarly vagabond Theo Vos takes up residence in the Castle, the historic estate of the refined Calla Drew, her heavy-drinking writer husband, Milo, and their agoraphobic teenage daughter, Martha, whom Theo has been hired to tutor. When he’s not translating French poetry to his precocious student, Theo can be found at Dolley’s Tavern with Calla’s brother-in-law, Jefferson, an affable imbiber who fancies himself a “guardian of local culture.” Jefferson’s collection of books on the history of Mott County is useful to Theo, who’s researching a long-lost relative whom he believes passed through the county—a place “known for its mountain music, outlaw ways, quaint speech, and vicious home brew.” Little does he know that Milo’s latest novel is an account of that very relative: Plymm, a Union Army soldier discharged after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. As the book jumps between the past (as rendered through excerpts from Milo’s first-person novel) and the present, Theo finds the answers he’s searching for—and more. Brookhouse’s latest novel features the same nimble prose found in his previous work, including A Pinch of Salt (2020) and Percy’s Field (2018). The antiquated language of Milo’s Finding Plymm, the book within the book, is particularly pleasing. However, Brookhouse’s novel also has one foot in the archetypal past when it comes to its depiction of its female characters—from Martha, a mentally fragile figure with the much-ballyhooed “body of a young Grace Kelly,” to the housekeeper, Mrs. Garth, whose genitals Milo describes as “the portal of pleasure,” wholly separate from the woman herself. That aside, Brookhouse has crafted an intricate, engaging, and cohesive page-turner.

A Southern gothic tale with a propulsive plot but uneven character development.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 21, 2024

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THE NIGHTINGALE

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

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THE WEDDING PEOPLE

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

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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

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