A richly evocative work from a major new talent.
A young man, longing to become a writer, comes of age.
As Martin Berg is growing up in Gothenburg, Sweden, he feels a certain restlessness. He is top of his class at school, but the other students bore him—that is, until he meets Gustav Becker, a precocious would-be artist with a similar taste for music and books. Together, they stay out all night, smoking cigarettes and drinking, while Martin dreams of becoming a writer. This debut novel by Sandgren is wonderfully evocative of late-1970s and early-'80s Sweden. The boys’ stomping grounds—and dissatisfactions—are rendered in exquisite detail. Sandgren alternates between Martin’s youth and his middle age. At 40, he co-owns a small, intellectual publishing house, and the promise of his youth seems to have been wasted: He spends almost every day counting down the hours. “And then came those hours,” Sandgren writes. “When all the chores of the day were done but it was too early to go to bed.” Martin’s wife, Cecilia, disappeared more than a decade ago, leaving Martin with two children. With no word from her since, Martin has been unable to move on. Cecilia’s disappearance makes this novel, in part, a mystery: Where has she gone, and why? Those questions provide the novel with a compelling throughline, but even without it, Sandgren’s descriptions of Martin’s earnest but slightly pretentious striving toward intellectual brilliance are witty, moving, and detailed enough on their own to carry the story forward. If the novel has any faults, it is that Sandgren occasionally hits the same note more than once. There are more than a few descriptions of decrepit student flats, for example, with dirty, food-encrusted dishes piled in the sink. Descriptions like these could have been condensed, but even as they are, they don’t constitute a major flaw.
A richly evocative work from a major new talent.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-662-60151-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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