An engaging and unsettling addition to the Titanic-themed fiction category.
Two sisters survive the sinking of the Titanic but face further danger when they return to England in this historical melodrama/mystery that poses the possibility of a nefarious reason for the grand ship’s rapid descent.
Poppy and Daisy Melville paid for their passage on the Titanic by securing positions as first-class stewardesses. They are the eldest of the four daughters of the Earl of Riddlesdown, an objectionable man ruled by his passion to produce a male heir. The two sisters have fled his home and are headed for California, where the impulsive 18-year-old Daisy is determined to become a Hollywood movie star. Nobody in Riddlesdown knows they have set sail for America. Both young women are rescued by Cunard Line’s Carpathia. But the reckless Daisy committed one final impetuous act while onboard the Titanic that will put her life in jeopardy when the surviving crew is forced to return to England. Meanwhile, back in London, Harry Hazelton, a former regimental officer and spy—injured in India after being attacked by a wild boar—is hired by the sisters’ uncle, the Bishop of Fordingbridge, to investigate the disappearance of his nieces. Add in two additional survivors—Ernie Sullivan, an Australian working as a Titanic fireman, and Alvin Towson, an American gambler—each with secret objectives, and there is plenty of material in the interactions among these characters for an intriguing drama. Hodgetts seamlessly weaves together records of survivor testimony and conclusions drawn by the British inquiry into the disaster with both her fictional characters and historical figures. The novel’s most riveting pages are the vivid opening scenes on the water, where Poppy sits in Lifeboat 14 watching the ship go down bow first and listening to the screams of the passengers pleading for help in the frigid Atlantic (“The starlight, cold and merciless, shone down on the people struggling in the water, and their desperate flailing produced a maelstrom of white phosphorescence”). But the story of the aftermath and coverups by the White Star Line and the British government are equally stunning and disturbing. It is a compelling backdrop to an engrossing tale that is at heart a traditional drama about life and love.
An engaging and unsettling addition to the Titanic-themed fiction category.Pub Date: May 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73760-703-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Emerge Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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