In 1984, the late Burns (d. 1990) published Cold Sassy Tree—a spirited, southern small-town rural tale with robust characters and a regional period (1906) diction that was as tangy and real as grits. Now comes this partial sequel—which continues the story of Will Tweedy and the courting of his future wife—that Burns, with extraordinary courage, worked on through her final illness. Burns's editor, Katrina Kenison, who was left with notes and letters by the author to indicate plotlines beyond the 15 finished chapters here, has contributed a tribute and personal reminiscence. The previous novel concerned the adventures of narrator Will Tweedy, then 14, of Cold Sassy Tree, Georgia, who among others wondered at the shocking marriage of newly widowed Grandpa Blakeslee and the stylish Miss Love. Now, in 1917, Grandpa is gone, and boarding with Miss Love is that ``pure-T beauty,'' new schoolteacher Sanna Maria Klein, who's infatuated with a Harvard boy—until her disastrous visit to his fancy home when bath water floods a festive board. Will's courting moves on—even through a Thanksgiving when Sanna's usually genial foster-father, snookered on moonshine, saws a half moon out of the dining-room table to accommodate his massive stomach—but there are seeds of trouble even before the wedding: Will, a county agent for the state's Department of Agriculture, speaks of farming's gamble as ``excitin','' Sanna says, ``I hate excitement...just another word for worry.'' Meanwhile, most of the Cold Sassy Tree cast is here again: abrasive Aunt Loma, who can whistle ``Whispering Hope'' so thrillingly at church but who has crazy marriage plans, as well as a mean deal for her son; Will's parents, yoked but apart; and townsfolk who have the stubborn endurance of hardscrabble lives beyond their salty talk. For fans of Cold Sassy Tree, an essential; for newcomers, a spur to read the earlier novel. Kenison's tribute to Burns, a gentle, gallant woman, comprises half of the book. (Eight-page photo insert)
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 1992
ISBN: 0-89919-908-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
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
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
