A bold conception, though Bojanowski’s big lug just isn’t interesting enough to hold our interest.
In 1940s Mexico, men fight dogs to the death, though violence isn’t confined just to the ring.
The narrator has no name, and, to give him a distinctive voice, newcomer Bojanowski lightly scrambles standard English syntax: The result reads like a bad translation, but at least we always understand the kid as he tells us about his childhood. His grandfather shaped his personality by reading him stories of fearless warriors and seeing to it that the boy’s blood wasn’t tamed by his weakling of a father. Blood, the foundation of machismo! The boy even comes close to killing his father to eradicate that weakness. Once a teenager, immensely strong and towering above his peers, he finds work in California, where he stabs another Mexican to death and is deported. In 1946, at 19, he arrives in Canción, a picturesque seaside town controlled by a businessman, Cantana, who has the police in his pocket. Cantana is building a big hotel to lure American tourists, but the narrator needs more than low-wage construction work. The dog fights, where the men wear claws and protective clothing, are what pay, both in money and instant fame. For all the blood and guts, the description of the ringside ritual is highly stylized as businessmen place their bets, flanked by their mistresses. Our guy wins with ease, even as he is transfixed by Cantana’s mistress, whose beauty, floating out of reach, begins to consume him on his long nocturnal walks, the monthly fights no longer a preoccupation. Meanwhile, the town seethes with violence as saboteurs disrupt hotel construction. Hatred of Cantana runs deep, and our dog fighter is given an ultimatum by two old men he knows: Kill Cantana or die yourself. The dog fighter’s dilemma provides a smidgen of suspense, but it’s too little, too late.
A bold conception, though Bojanowski’s big lug just isn’t interesting enough to hold our interest.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-059560-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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