by Joe Dunthorne ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2018
A domestic comedy that explodes the myths of manhood with joyful pandemonium.
Dunthorne (Wild Abandon, 2012, etc.) forsakes his erstwhile examinations of the adolescent mind to tackle one man’s full-on fear of adulthood.
It all starts at a party, as tales of a common lad’s downfall so often do. Our narrator for this story of rapid decline is Ray Morris, a London man who is 33 years old and married to a very pregnant wife, Garthene, a dedicated but tired hospital nurse. There is a flirtation at this party between Ray and his mate Lee’s wife, Marie, and a retaliatory punch that sends Ray reeling into a crisis of faith. “No surprise that those few seconds between the first punch and the second have come to stand in for probably three months of my thirties,” Ray tells us. “That I had never been punched in the face before seemed faintly ridiculous. How could I claim full maturity without ever having jumped through that life hoop?” What follows is a broadly sketched comedy of errors, all leading to a pitiful but all-too-common resolution for Ray, largely based on his answer to Garthene’s question, when, after the party, he shows up at the hospital where she's on duty, as to how drunk he is: “Very,” he confesses. “And making terrible decisions.” There's a frantic desperation to Ray's everyday life, even aside from his present troubles—he's a man who, while he will soon be a father, struggles to piece together a living as a tech journalist and fumes at the cash buyers who keep undercutting his desire to purchase an apartment. But Dunthorne also masterfully ratchets up Ray’s escalating troubles, culminating with an arrest (following a riot) for aggravated trespass (breaking into a landlord’s office) and receiving stolen goods (taking the proffered beer from a cheerful looter). Plus, Ray’s smiling appearance on a CCTV camera (“Happy Tragedy Man” reads the headline) earns him a firing and ruthless trolling by the public. Will things turn out fine for our hero? Probably not, as happens so often.
A domestic comedy that explodes the myths of manhood with joyful pandemonium.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-941040-87-4
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
by Christina Lauren ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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