A gripping narrative of perseverance in the face of adversity.
In Wolter’s novel, a young Chinese woman displays fortitude as tumultuous world events threaten both her and her family’s safety.
In 1921, Lee Lye Hoe is born in South Canton Province, China, and grows up happily on her mother’s modest farm. But when she is only 6 years old, her irresponsible father abandons them, absconding with most of the family’s savings and leaving his daughter embittered and carrying the freight of a “hefty mistrust of men.” They manage to rebuild their savings and transform the farm into a prosperous one, but Lye Hoe’s mother suddenly dies, leaving the 16-year-old girl to fend for herself and raise her two young cousins, Yang and Meow. Uncle Wong, a nearby neighbor, tries to push Lye Hoe into marriage with his son, Wong Soo Bing, but she is as uncompromisingly independent as her mother was and insists on taking care of herself. In this moving tale, Lye Hoe becomes a victim of her own success: A flourishing farmer, she’s vulnerable to the approaching marauding Communists who behead landowners like herself. She manages to secure passage for herself and her cousins to Malaya in exchanged for years of indentured servitude, working as a cook for a cruel woman who treats her like a slave. Lye Hoe becomes deeply attached to her mistress’s newborn daughter, Moke Chee, a bright spot in an otherwise dreary existence, but her life is threatened once again when, in 1941, Malaya is occupied by Japanese troops. Wolter’s prose is threadbare, lacking even a whiff of literary style. Yet, the plot is affectingly poignant and intelligently executed. The narrative is a compelling exploration of the irrepressibility of fate and the manner in which it dispenses blessings as well as burdens. It is a testament to the tale itself that the story is so dramatically engrossing despite the author’s limitations as a stylist.
A gripping narrative of perseverance in the face of adversity.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2024
ISBN: 9798332431487
Page Count: 353
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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