An entertaining, thought-provoking spin on rebooting the mind and heart while in quarantine.
A collection of five vignettes portrays life in the age of Covid-19 quarantines.
In the spring of 2020, arts journalist Stewart, befuddled by the pandemic raging across the globe, laughed “at life’s new absurdities.” As a creative outlet, she began writing humorous tales starring quarantined strangers forced to interact with one another and to ultimately learn more about themselves through the “complexities offered by chaos.” The vignettes imagine a time in August 2020 when a second viral mutation emerges and the government distributes permanently locking bracelets to detect and track the infection. The Forget-Me-Not dive bar is the location for the first story, featuring a discreet regular whose bracelet flashes red and blurts out official warnings. The patrons and staff proceed to drink and become acquainted for their mandatory six-week quarantine. Elsewhere, the situation repeats at the Golden Pin-Up Salon, a gossipy, small-town beauty parlor where the beaming bracelets strike terror in the hearts of a feuding housewife and a distressed colorist. The same bright red beacons flash for other strangers who unexpectedly find themselves quarantining together at a rural Missouri dentist office, a Southern California BMW dealership, and the conference room of a prominent attorney. Once introduced, the heartwarming, character-driven tales progress through short chapter snippets. The cross-section of locales sets the scene for a diverse assortment of characters varying in age, race, and gender—and from all walks of life—who personify differing political persuasions, faiths, and perspectives on life and love. The author leaves no person unaffected or plotline dangling, as all of her players recognize, even if fleetingly, the power of human kindness and self-love. As she demonstrated in her advice book about possessions for parents with millennial children, No Thanks Mom (2017), Stewart exhibits a lust for life and parlays the lessons she’s learned throughout her travels into the engaging storylines of this cornucopia of worthy and addictive characters—with cute line drawings by Brallier included. Amusing and immediately relevant, the collection creates a world mired in uncertainty and turmoil but also a place where people can learn from others and become surprised by their capacity for change.
An entertaining, thought-provoking spin on rebooting the mind and heart while in quarantine.Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9981025-5-9
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Flandricka House Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
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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