This vivid, character-driven tale sometimes moves slowly but is written with care and passion.
Three women in a New Jersey resort town discover the surprising ways they are connected in this debut novel.
Seventy-year-old sculptor Goldie lives in the seaside town of Cape May, where she owns a shop to sell her wares. Lately, she has been flooded by memories of her beloved stepfather and, more disturbingly, the apparition of her dead husband, Simon, whom she detested during their marriage. Concerned about her financial future, she seeks the advice of Bruce, a trusted younger friend. Bruce is the second husband of Jocelyn, a local novelist who is on the verge of an out-of-the-blue custody battle with her ex-spouse. As Jocelyn waits for the advance for her novel, Bruce reveals he has a monetary need for his contracting business. Krystal, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, blossomed into an attractive woman who caught the eye of Abe, a lovable and wealthy businessman. The two are now married, and Krystal struggles to resolve her newfound status with her painful past. As Goldie creates amazing artworks out of clay, her vision begins to blur in such a way that she fears the problem is more than an optometrist can solve. Jocelyn finds Bruce’s mother’s diary and begins to learn of a shocking secret while Krystal seeks a reliable outlet for her creative side. Simonetti’s stirring novel excels at creating characters that are fully fleshed out and deeply committed to their artistic careers and their interpersonal relationships. The three principal characters are thoughtful and conscientious, and the deep dives into their thoughts and memories give sharp illustrations of their motivations and fears up to the touching conclusion. But as good as the book is at weaving the players’ stories together, some flashbacks and diary entries are slow and seem superfluous until key details are revealed later in the work.
This vivid, character-driven tale sometimes moves slowly but is written with care and passion.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-044-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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