A warm and funny story about the connections between family and friends.
A grumpy astronaut unexpectedly befriends a down-on-its-luck family.
Thomas Major wasn’t even meant to be the first man on Mars—but when the astronaut who was supposed to go dropped dead of a heart attack, he jumped at the chance. Being completely alone in space sounds heavenly to Thomas, who dislikes just about everyone he’s ever encountered. But one day, while attempting to contact his ex-wife from his spaceship, he ends up accidentally calling Gladys, an elderly British woman with dementia. Soon, he’s enmeshed in her family’s life. Her 10-year-old grandson, James, is trying to win a science competition while dealing with intense bullying at school. Her granddaughter, Ellie, 15, is working multiple jobs while her father’s in prison. The three of them are just trying to keep their family together without social services getting involved, but when they get an eviction notice, their only chance seems to be James’ winning his science competition and getting the prize money. Although Thomas tries to stay out of it, he finds himself wanting to help the family, especially James. He begins to realize that there are actually a few people worth living for on Earth. Barnett creates a lovably grumpy hero in Thomas Major. He starts out genuinely unpleasant, but as readers learn more about the tragedies in his past, he becomes sympathetic. He also grows as he gets to know Gladys, James, and Ellie, who are all lively characters in their own rights. Although the problems they deal with are serious, there’s plenty of humor, including more fart jokes than most heartwarming novels feature.
A warm and funny story about the connections between family and friends.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4091-6813-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hachette UK
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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