A satisfying examination of one woman’s journey of self-discovery.
A woman in her mid-50s embarks on a solo adventure and finds herself in the process.
When Ammalie Brinks’ husband, Vincent, died, they had only recently become empty nesters. This new loss was too soon, and Ammalie worries that if she had acted faster when he had the stroke, if she had known what to do, perhaps he wouldn’t have died. Instead, she’s been left on her own. Her son, Powell, has asked for space while he processes his father’s death; her closest friend, Mari, is confronting marriage troubles; and her sister, Apricot, is struggling with her health. With no one holding her back, Ammalie sets off on her own, telling no one where exactly she’s going. She begins a journey to visit three specific locations, many thousands of miles apart, using old keys to gain entry. To reach these places—one she visited with Vincent and two he visited without her—she sleeps in her car, eats canned goods from the container, and often forgoes indoor plumbing. She hopes the trip will reveal more to her about Vincent, but as she runs into challenges, the person she ends up learning about is herself. Told in a close third person, the book follows Ammalie as she meets exciting people as well as wobbles off-kilter from too much time alone, talking to her belongings and failing to adequately care for her physical needs. The author deftly depicts the escalating loneliness and fear Ammalie feels as hours on her own accumulate. Because of the solo nature of her journey, a large chunk of the book takes place inside Ammalie’s head, which does slow things down. Even so, the author’s nuanced descriptions of Ammalie’s determination, joy, and trepidation as she meets people, as well as the lessons she takes away from each of the encounters, are engaging enough to get you through the slower portions. The book examines weighty topics like grief, marriage struggles, and growing older in a manner that is thought-provoking and insightful.
A satisfying examination of one woman’s journey of self-discovery.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593724200
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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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