Errs on the side of the pat and predictable.
Three middle-aged sisters gather to consider the fate of their family property on Martha’s Vineyard.
How does one family cope with the trauma of losing a 15-acre seaside spread that has been theirs since Colonial times? Especially if they are descended from the Daggetts, one of the founding families of Martha’s Vineyard? After their mother passes away, the McCarthy sisters, Dar, Delia and Rory, converge on Daggett’s Way, their rustic vacation home, to pack up memorabilia. Daggett’s Way is listed for sale because the sisters can afford neither to maintain it nor pay spiraling property taxes and inheritance taxes. There is an offer on the table from obnoxious buyers who plan to tear the historic place down and construct a vulgar facsimile of a French chateau, complete with indoor pool. Particularly hard hit by the prospect of losing her birthright is eldest daughter Dar, a graphic novelist whose manga altar ego Dulse can affect reality in ways Dar can’t. As for her sisters, Delia’s marriage is threatened by son Pete’s meth addiction. Rory, mother of three, compulsively cyberstalks her ex, Jonathan, who left her for a younger woman. Years before, the sisters’ father, Michael McCarthy, an Irish immigrant boat-builder who always felt threatened by his Daggett in-laws’ wealth, disappeared after a solo voyage to Ireland aboard his hand-crafted sailing sloop. Dar recalls that her father had some crazy notion that in 1625 or so King Charles I had granted his family a tract of land within the Daggett parcel’s boundaries. Not stopping to worry about how it’s going to help them prove that they have an ancient title to land they already own, the sisters head off to Ireland, where they learn that Michael’s madness was indeed methodical. Rich veins of conflict go unmined, and the most interesting characters are peripheral, including Harrison, a dispossessed Vineyardite who copes in a most original way with the loss of his own family fiefdom.
Errs on the side of the pat and predictable.Pub Date: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02250-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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.
