Spencer’s writing is always a pleasure.
The romantic obsession hidden beneath the surface of his closest male friendship warps the life of a seemingly straight, supersuccessful financier.
Spencer continues to mine the dramatic possibilities of his fictional Hudson Valley town of Leyden; the current book is a sequel to River Under the Road (2017), including most of the characters. Back in the 1970s, Kip Woods was Thaddeus Kaufman and Grace Cornell’s druggie New York friend with a job at EF Hutton. He’s still in finance, making really big bucks at a high-end investment firm; his persona is now more The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit than Bright Lights, Big City. However, Grace’s suspicion, never officially confirmed, that he was “queer” turns out to be on the money. Kip has been secretly in love with Thaddeus since their college days in Ann Arbor, so when Thaddeus calls for help early one morning in 1997, Kip is there in a heartbeat. Back when Thaddeus’ screenwriting career was flying high in the early '80s, he bought an estate in Leyden called Orkney. But “houses like that are like dope habits—they only get more and more expensive,” and meanwhile, Thaddeus’ career has tanked completely. How can Kip help his friend? The first suggestion is that he buy a little piece of Orkney and hold it until Thaddeus can raise the scratch to buy it back. After that fails to fix everything, a much more problematic idea is vaunted. A character who understands the true dynamic of the friendship tells Kip flat-out in Chapter 3, “He will destroy you.” Dum-dum-dum. While it’s not hard to imagine Kip hiding his crush on Thaddeus for decades, it’s a struggle to accept his completely closeted, self-hating persona—he seems to be from a slightly earlier era. But you’ll stick around for gems like these: “The spurned lover has only been rejected by one, maybe two people. The spurned artist has been rejected by the world.” “Infidelity is an avenue to adventure available to all, rich and poor…anyone who feels crushed by the dailiness of settled life, anyone who needs a window in a life that suddenly seems all walls.” “I can only tell you what you already know: ego is the sworn enemy of happiness.”
Spencer’s writing is always a pleasure.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-285162-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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