A thoughtful depiction of a monumental artist hampered by the sometimes-overwrought storytelling that surrounds it.
In Byrd’s debut historical novel, an American-born veteran of World War I finds work as a gardener for famed painter Claude Monet, whom he suspects is his father.
Oscar Bonhomme was born in France but raised in San Francisco. His late mother, Christine, was a well-known landscape designer in California; she was also born in France, and in Antibes, many years ago, she had an affair with Monet, and she believed that the artist was her son’s father. After Oscar recovers in a French hospital from his wounds—he’s among the few Americans who fought as a soldier for France during the Great War—he lands a job as a gardener for Monet, hoping to finally determine his true parentage. However, the artist isn’t an easy man to get to know; he’s earned his “storied reputation as a reluctant speaker.” At first, the mystery only deepens when Oscar is forced to consider the brilliant artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a friend of Monet’s, as a possible paternity candidate as well as Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister of France. Oscar also becomes embroiled in a flirtatious relationship with Isabelle Brescher, an aspiring painter who immediately takes a shine to him despite his deep anxieties. Indeed, Byrd too often depicts the protagonist’s fragility in melodramatic, overheated terms over the course of the novel; for example, Oscar is beside himself when he first discovers that Isabelle is interested in art, as he is: “His head was spinning. It seemed too much of a coincidence that this goddess would have interests like his. Perhaps he was dreaming? He stomped on his foot to make sure he was awake.” Still, the author presents a poignant and historically authentic portrait of Monet, capturing his laconic, mercurial manner. Also, Byrd’s knowledge of Monet’s work, and the artistic milieu from which it came, is impressively rigorous. As a result, although the story’s unabashed sentimentality can be wearisome at times, art lovers are likely to enjoy its peek into a great painter’s mind.
A thoughtful depiction of a monumental artist hampered by the sometimes-overwrought storytelling that surrounds it.Pub Date: March 10, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-67871-852-5
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Giverny Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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