A novel with realistic portrayals of marriage and friendship, weighed down by unnecessary characterization.
A debut novel about family dynamics and the complexities of longtime relationships.
Green’s work—set in the 1970s, ’80s, and 2000s, and in many cities and countries all over the world—chronicles the complicated friendship of Americans Dina Aharoni Wasserman and Julia Cawley Kinsella, two women who’ve devoted the better part of their adult lives to raising their children and accommodating their husbands’ demanding medical careers. But as Dina notes to Julia early on, they lack ways to vent their frustrations: “God forbid I complain. I’m a ‘doctor’s wife’, what else could I possibly want?” Although the pair come from very different backgrounds—Dina’s ancestry is Sephardic Jewish, and Julia’s is Irish Catholic—they are similar in one key way: They both want to feel a sense of purpose and passion beyond their domestic roles: Dina has “wanted to write stories for as long as she could remember,” while Julia longs for “sexual energy or interest” from a man other than her husband. As the novel progresses, Green shifts between the two narratives, devoting chapters to other members of Dina’s or Julia’s extended families, which gives the story greater scope. Readers learn, for example, about the men and women who became the grandparents and parents of Dina, Julia, and their husbands, and about the children of both couples. As these interconnected narratives unfold, readers begin to understand that there’s been a falling out between Dina and Julia—one that leads to serious consequences. Clues are effectively revealed through revelations regarding family relationships and genetics, which results in a rather complicated narrative. Green is a strong writer, especially when it comes to descriptions of marital tension; at one point, for instance, she notes that Dina’s husband’s “tardiness was just another minor skirmish in the war of their marriage, a war they both needed to win.” However, the overabundance of voices causes the narrative to feel excessively detailed, which pulls the focus away from one of the novel’s most salient themes: the connection that Dina and Julia form over their resentment of the limits on their lives.
A novel with realistic portrayals of marriage and friendship, weighed down by unnecessary characterization.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2021
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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