A poignant exploration of generational trauma and healing.
Tucker’s novel, set in mid-20th century Northern California, offers a deeply personal look at a family shaken by tragedy.
The landscape of Lyla Hawkins’ childhood is dominated by two towering figures: her charismatic father and the gigantic oak tree that looms in her grandmother’s backyard. Charles Hawkins is very much the “fun” parent; he’s the one who takes Lyla speeding along the coastline in a convertible with the top down, or who eggs her on to climb along the highest branch in a backyard oak tree to hang a rope swing. However, his mood often teeters on a knife-edge; his experiences in World War II left him prone to uncontrollable bouts of crying and alcohol abuse. When he hangs himself from the aforementioned oak tree,10-year-old Lyla can’t untangle the grief of losing her father from her misplaced guilt: “Was it me?. . .Was it my fault? Because of my swing?” she later asks her mother, who refuses to answer. In the years that follow, she tries to navigate her feelings of loss while also dealing with her complicated relationships with her devastated mother and implacable grandmother. Later, as an adult, she leaves California for a while, ends up with men with whom she unknowingly repeats unhealthy patterns from childhood, but eventually feels called back home. Although Tucker’s novel is told primarily from Lyla’s third-person perspective, the inclusion of other characters’ points of view humanizes figures who might otherwise come across as unfeeling or unknowable, such as Lyla’s mother, Louise. A late-stage reveal of a family secret kept for decades feels more like an afterthought and doesn’t particularly serve the narrative; the plot and themes would have remained intact and affecting without its inclusion. However, the resolution of Lyla’s complicated feelings regarding the oak tree is satisfying and handled with nuance.
A poignant exploration of generational trauma and healing.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781647428341
Page Count: 320
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2024
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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