This historical novel offers an unusual situation, but the trappings of the story are not as fresh.
A young Black woman in 19th-century London takes a job as a dying white man’s nurse and becomes an amateur detective.
In 1833, Hester Reeves arrives for the first day of a new job at a foreboding mansion called Tall Trees. Hester is 23, a free Black woman who uses the title “doctoress” to indicate her skills as an herbalist. Up to now, she has used those skills mainly to treat the city’s sex workers at King’s Cross, with the support of her kind husband, Jos. Hester’s mother has died, leaving her to care for Willa, her pretty and headstrong younger sister. Willa’s factory job has brought her to the attention of her rakish boss, and Hester wants to move her family out of the city, farther from such temptations. So she jumps at the chance to undertake the care of the wealthy Gervaise Cherville for a month, as he settles his affairs before moving to his country estate to live out his last days. Hester’s skills are suitable—Gervaise is dying of syphilis—and the pay generous enough to finance a move. She soon discovers Gervaise wants something more from her. Years ago, he brought several enslaved women from his family’s plantation in Honduras to London. They escaped, but he is haunted by them and wants Hester’s help to find out their fates. She proves to be a good detective, but her discovery of what happened to the women could ruin lives. Complicating the situation are Gervaise’s sternly protective housekeeper, Margaret, and his son, Rowland, the very man Hester hopes to distance Willa from, who is eager to get his hands on his father’s estate. The plot has some interesting turns, and Gervaise’s situation as an enslaver coming to terms with his behavior has potential. But the book suffers from stereotypes and limited character development; Hester is so unfailingly upright she can come off as priggish, while Rowland is such a stereotypical villain he almost twirls a mustache. But with brisk pacing and plentiful historical detail, it’s still an entertaining read.
This historical novel offers an unusual situation, but the trappings of the story are not as fresh.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780358627920
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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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