A compelling and reflective mix of tragedy and optimism with a strong lead character.
Boyle’s debut historical novel follows the early years of an Irish orphan who leaves her homeland in the mid-19th century to begin anew in America.
It’s the summer of 1848 in the small village of Baltimore, Ireland. Fourteen-year-old Rosaleen MacNamara, a fisherman’s daughter, lost her father to the sea several years ago, and her mother has now become a victim of the potato famine that’s been devastating the country. Alone, she buries her mother, setting off the next day for Cork in the hope of finding other family members. But they’re all gone—either dead or moved to other lands. Rosaleen seeks safety in a workhouse in Cork, where, despite the filth and harsh working conditions, she at least has shelter and a bare minimum of food. A year later, the British government begins shipping healthy young women off to Australia to work as housemaids, although rumors speak to pessimistic outcomes. Rosaleen is one of 20 people selected from the workhouse, but with the kind assistance of a young substitute captain, the 15-year-old steals aboard a neighboring vessel bound for Boston. Onboard, she meets 19-year-old Emmett Doherty, and by the end of the monthlong journey across the pond, their lives have become intertwined. Boyle crafts Rosaleen as an ingratiating narrator and allows readers to see both the good and the ugly aspects of pre–Civil War Massachusetts through her eyes. The author nicely weaves some of the period’s roiling social conflicts into the drama, including racism, bigotry against the Irish, and exploitation of child labor (especially by railroad companies). It also addresses the inexcusably dangerous working conditions in the factories as Rosaleen becomes involved in both the abolitionist and labor movements in Lowell, Massachusetts, home of cotton mills. Tender moments of friendship alternate with frightening sections, including a vivid description of an infuriating and heartbreaking mill accident. Boyle also captures the mood and culture of the young Irish immigrants without employing a heavy reliance upon dialect and establishes a good pace for the poignant narrative.
A compelling and reflective mix of tragedy and optimism with a strong lead character.Pub Date: June 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7366077-1-8
Page Count: 355
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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