A bold and remorseless debut about the agony and affection that are attendant to complicated families.
Attempts by adult sisters to extricate their mother from an abusive relationship force them to confront a shared trauma from their childhood.
The novel begins as Tanya and Nessa Bloom return to their hometown outside Boston to help their mother and stepfather prepare to move to New Hampshire. When the sisters, who are not nearly as close as they once were, arrive home, they are bewildered by what they find. Their mother, Lorraine, seems skittish and fragile; she’s gotten braces seemingly at random, and she’s overly deferential toward their stepfather, Jesse. These hints at domestic abuse quickly bear out, as Jesse grows angry at Lorraine and attacks her, even attempting to strangle her. After the daughters discover their bloodied mother and rush her to the hospital, Tanya encourages her to seek a restraining order. Nessa, who’s always had a soft spot for Jesse, tries to support Tanya’s plan, but she struggles to perceive her stepfather as a villain. Meanwhile, Lorraine grapples with her conflicting emotions for the man she can’t seem to stop loving. Nessa becomes a crutch, accepting her mother’s rationalizations for wanting to return to Jesse and angering Tanya, who only wants to see Lorraine escape immediately. As the sisters' already strained relationship deteriorates further, the author reveals a harrowing experience from their adolescence that continues to impact their feelings toward each other, toward men, and toward their mother. The characters face several difficult choices throughout the novel, and they repeatedly disappoint each other. Chapters alternate among the varying perspectives of all three women, and author Halperin expertly weaves scenes from the past into the present to build a more complete world. She also dives deep into the confused, reckless thoughts that can permeate adolescence. The characters are unflinchingly honest as they explore their emotions in a manner that is both refreshing and haunting. The novel is similarly unapologetic as it tackles difficult questions about abusive relationships, toxic secrets, and romantic and familial betrayals. While certain subplots do little to advance the narrative, this difficult story is sufficiently high stakes and relentless that it remains gripping throughout.
A bold and remorseless debut about the agony and affection that are attendant to complicated families.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-98-488206-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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