Watching Fowler's heroine vanquish the gatekeepers and minions who stand in her way is nothing short of mesmerizing.
Portrait of the Gilded Age socialite and suffragist who famously followed her own advice: “First marry for money, then marry for love.”
Doyenne and co-designer of palatial mansions in Manhattan, Long Island, and Newport, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was born Alva Smith in Mobile, Alabama—half a century before the heroine of Fowler’s previous novel, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (2013). As the novel opens, 21-year-old Alva and her sisters, the children of formerly prosperous parents—all unmarried despite summers in Newport and Europe—are caring for their invalid widower father, facing bankruptcy and the unhappy prospect of letting out rooms. Taking cues from her vivacious pal Consuelo Yznaga (a half-Cuban sugar-cane heiress soon to be married to an English duke), Alva dons an ebony ball gown garnished with goldenrod blossoms to catch the eye of an heir. Not just any heir: William K. Vanderbilt, grandson of the richest robber baron in America, is a horseman and yachting enthusiast (who, according to Fowler’s characterization, is not the brightest skipper in the fleet and a compulsive philanderer to boot). His most vexing problem is that Vanderbilt money is too new, barring his family from being “received” in Old Knickerbocker circles. The genuine blossoms on Alva’s dress make W.K. sneeze, but to his credit he recognizes something—call it originality, single-mindedness, intelligence—that will vault his future heirs, if not his boorish grandpa, into the best society. The game is on. Not only will Alva best snooty Caroline Astor at her own game (helped by William’s wedding gift of Catherine the Great’s pearls), she’ll secure suitable marriages for her children and undisputed social rank for herself. For “status gave a woman control over her existence, more protection from being battered about by others’ whims or life’s caprices.” Writing from a close third-person perspective, Fowler spends a good deal of time in Alva’s head, evoking the wrinkles and contradictions in her character—imperious yet self-doubting; stubborn and rigid yet energetic, determined and (even by today’s standard) forward-thinking. Though Alva's involvement in women's causes gets rather short shrift (supplemented in an afterword), the upshot of her platonic attraction to one of her husband's best friends stands in nicely for one of her other proto-feminist remarks: “Pray to God. She will help you.”
Watching Fowler's heroine vanquish the gatekeepers and minions who stand in her way is nothing short of mesmerizing.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09547-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
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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