A fast-paced, funny romp with easy laughs, surprisingly complex characters, and plenty of quirky twists.
In this black comedy, fate throws together a suicidal man, a workaholic, a snob, and a tempted priest.
Mike was the type of guy who, as a young man, won “Best Hair”; had girls chasing after him; and easily became “regional manager” at his company. But now, he’s round, balding, soon to be twice-divorced, and has plateaued professionally. Fearful that his wife is cheating on him, Mike has decided to end it all because “life is too hard.” Meanwhile, a man named Paul represents everything that Mike is not: successful, adventurous, saying yes to any opportunity. He has Amber, the perfect girlfriend in that she is “beautiful, smart, and, best of all, she had trouble leaving the office in the evening.” But lately Amber has wanted more from Paul and more from her life than work. Confused and drunk on the night of her birthday, Amber winds up hitting on a muscular, tattooed, whiskey-drinking, cigarette-smoking priest. That priest, Father Coady, swallows his lust and tries to get away from temptation when he finds Mike waving a gun around his minivan. Mike wakes up the next morning in the hospital with a gunshot wound and a mysterious, perhaps even miraculous, figure at his side. Supernatural forces, startling coincidences, and even eBay purchases continue to bring these four people together in Reinhardt’s (Afaq, 2014) offbeat novel. His characters expertly walk a thin line between outlandish caricatures and relatable people dealing with the stress of modern life. Amber in particular easily wins both sympathy and laughs as she careens from her outrageous ambition to sympathetic jealousy within just a few paragraphs while Father Coady’s military backstory gives intriguing levels to his outlook on the others. The author’s rapid dialogue creates some genuinely amusing and unexpected exchanges—including a memorable slapstick fight scene involving Mike—but they won’t be for all tastes. Reinhardt’s jokes are often crude, and the book’s mysterious title character requires quite the leap of faith. Still, an exciting and off-kilter adventure awaits those readers willing to take it.
A fast-paced, funny romp with easy laughs, surprisingly complex characters, and plenty of quirky twists.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68401-966-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Mascot Books
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2019
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
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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