Intelligent, challenging fiction.
Childhood friends from a small Utah town reconnect in Los Angeles, with unexpected results for both.
Dumped by her husband of almost 20 years, 37-year-old Verna decides to head for LA. She finds temporary refuge there with Jolene, the free-spirited best friend she hasn’t seen since high school, who is now a famous performance artist. But things are clearly tense between Jolene and her husband, Vincent, and working-class, undereducated Verna feels out of place with this wealthy, intellectual couple. She finds a job in MacArthur Park and an inexpensive apartment nearby, “my own private place in the churning city.” A few months later, Vincent visits with the news that Jolene has left him and moved to New York. Verna finds herself drawn to this odd, aloof man, and though he admits “I have difficulty showing my feelings,” he soon proposes and they are married. Flash-forward 30 years: The couple is still living in Verna’s MacArthur Park apartment, but the building is about to be sold and they will have to leave, a severe disruption for change-phobic Vincent. At the same time, Jolene reappears, dying of cancer and asking Verna to take a road trip back to Utah with her. These developments background Freeman’s extended explorations into the complexities of marriage, friendship, and art. Verna has been able to accept and cope with Vincent’s Asperger’s-related peculiarities as Jolene could not; she remains grateful that he gently introduced her to the worlds of literature and art. Now, at 67, Verna is a respected writer, to Jolene’s rather condescending approval. Their long drive to Utah, in addition to showcasing Freeman’s bravura descriptions of diverse American landscapes, spotlights Jolene’s arrogance and egotism; she pontificates about feminist art, American politics, and the meaning of their childhood friendship, while Verna quietly seethes. Yet she does love this difficult, complicated woman, and the trip brings their relationship to a new equilibrium as Jolene prepares to die. Readers may find it frustrating that warm, perceptive Verna has spent so much of her life adapting to the demands of two self-absorbed people, but Freeman asks us to understand that committed relationships necessarily involve conflict and compromise.
Intelligent, challenging fiction.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-31595-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
