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
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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