Irresistible—a funny, sexy romp that’s also smart, even wise.
In Martin’s cheerful new novel about sex and economics, the madam of an upscale bordello hires a blind 19-year-old as a prostitute, a decision that proves life-changing for both.
When the novel opens in 1954, narrator Lila, who identifies herself as the widow of a far-flung traveler named Gulliver (whom she’s actually met only in the pages of a comic book), has been running her business for 10 years in the main city of a tropical island, where it’s legal. Matter-of-fact Lila, who grew up in poverty and spent her late adolescence in a seedy brothel, prides herself on the respectability of her house and its clientele while diligently treating her employees fairly and with respect. A good-natured cynic, she sees herself and her girls as laborers of the service industry: “The orgasm is a powerful force in human society.” The arrival of Carità only makes that power more apparent. Educated in braille and brought up in comfort, Carità comes to Lila after the uncle who raised her loses his money and kills himself. No one, including the reader, can resist her charms—not just beauty and intelligence but also insightfulness and a pragmatic will that particularly impresses Lila. Neither a victim nor a saint, Carità glides through one crisis after another, the rare literary character always in flow. The central predicament is her inconvenient romance with a client, a rich college student who’s become mixed up with gangsters. Fearing that “rich boys can’t be trusted,” Lila tries to help Carità, only to end up in her own inappropriate relationship with the student’s father. There are lively discussions of Marx, Veblen, and conspicuous consumption. There are occasional stark episodes of bloodshed and madness. There is a lot of sex. And a lot of joy. Martin’s characters are not prim; neither is her book. As Lila explains, “The word ‘Carnal’ is so much more thrilling than ‘spiritual.’ ”
Irresistible—a funny, sexy romp that’s also smart, even wise.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780385549950
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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