A relatable and satisfyingly realistic love story to cure any lingering lockdown blues.
Two solitary adults take the plunge into postpandemic socialization to quell their growing discomfort from loneliness.
Marnie Walsh, a 38-year-old London copy editor, embraces the fact that she has more control over her time than her friends with spouses and children do—but she starts to question the appeal of her lifestyle when an autogenerated year-in-review photo compilation reveals only “her oven light-bulb, a recipe for hearty lentil soup, a close-up of an ingrowing hair…all accompanied by Carole King’s ‘You’ve Got a Friend.’” Marnie’s most steadfast friend, Cleo Fraser, is eager to capitalize on Marnie’s recent self-awareness and invites her on a trip to the northern countryside. This is much to the dismay of Cleo’s colleague, geography teacher Michael Bradshaw, who had planned this walk across northern England from west coast to east as a solo undertaking. Michael is just as lonely as Marnie but even more depressed. While Marnie’s coping mechanism is a Bridget Jonesian style of self-deprecating humor, Michael’s is to walk the countryside until numbness sets in. Cleo’s intention is to bring a group of singleton friends together, but given Michael’s recent, painful separation from his wife, “trying to picture himself on a date now was like trying to imagine himself bungee-jumping, theoretically possible but under what circumstances?” As Michael and Marnie walk together, they begin to banter, and the fresh air and copious pints at trailside pubs revive long-buried versions of themselves. Like their arduous walk, this love story isn’t glamorous or fast-paced but it’s worth the mileage. Given the witty dialogue and sublime natural settings (think Wordsworth and Brontë), it’s not hard to imagine this as another of Nicholls’ big-screen adaptations, like One Day (2009).
A relatable and satisfyingly realistic love story to cure any lingering lockdown blues.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780063394056
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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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