Undeniably well-meaning but too circumspect in its approach.
A couple is torn apart by a child’s cancer in Allnutt’s debut.
From the first chapters, readers know that something has gone seriously awry in the marriage of young upper-middle-class Brits Rob and Anna. Addled by vodka, Rob wakes up to discover that Anna and their young son, Jack, are gone. There follows an extended flashback detailing how this came about. The couple met while attending Cambridge, she in economics and he in computer science. Degreed, they soon settle down to a comfortable London life: She’s an accountant; he has a lucrative contract with a startup. After two miscarriages, Anna and Rob are overjoyed at the birth of a son. As Jack grows, he bonds with stay-at-home dad Rob, whose career dilemmas, interposed at this point, do little to either advance the story or illuminate his character. Similarly, beyond the stereotypical attributes of her trade, we never learn much about Anna. At age 5, Jack is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Two specialists are consulted and surgery performed, affording provisional hope: A celebratory vacation in Crete ensues. But Jack has a relapse, and this time only palliative measures are possible. Rob consults Hope’s Place, a social media forum, obsessively following “Nev,” one poster whose son Josh had a similar malignancy. Josh is now in complete remission thanks to the ministrations of a Dr. Sladkovsky in Prague. Sladkovsky’s clinic, though pricey, has purportedly worked miracles with “immuno-engineering.” Suspecting snake oil and concerned about finances, Anna balks at this expedient. (The costs, if any, of Jack’s U.K. treatment are never addressed, which U.S. readers might find disappointing.) When a family emergency calls Anna away, Rob, desperate that time is running out, spirits Jack to Prague. Sladkovsky’s experimental protocols seem to be working—then an irate Anna arrives. In its depiction of ordinary people in dire circumstances, the book opts for uplifting messages over controversy. Sympathy for Allnutt’s characters is de rigueur; unfortunately, they lack the depth to command it.
Undeniably well-meaning but too circumspect in its approach.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1473-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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