An engaging read, particularly for cat lovers, and a promising debut.
A fictionalized saga of a real-life Hungarian refugee turned cat rescuer.
In her debut novel, Caruthers takes on the nearly impossible task of piecing together a life kept purposefully hidden. She combines research and imagination to pay tribute to her departed friend Vivie Degirdro, a college professor and cat lover with a tragic past. The narrative, though fictionalized, will still give readers an idea of the resilient, intelligent, and compassionate woman that Caruthers knew. On the eve of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, 12-year old Vivie Degirdro is forced to flee a suburb of Budapest on foot with her affluent parents and young sister. All too quickly, Vivie’s carefree innocence is tempered by violence and cruelty, which they encounter with every passing mile. When her loving family is irreparably shattered by tragedy, Vivie must find a way forwardin America while guarding a family secret that she’s resolved to take to the grave. In her sojourn across Europe and beyond, Vivie exhibits ingenuity, determination, and a notable affinity for animals. She’s shaken by the abrupt loss of her cat in her initial escape from Budapest, but her bond with the many cats she encounters afterward becomes her greatest comfort. The cat-centered moments sometimes feel tonally unbalanced, as they’re juxtaposed with genuinely harrowing scenes in which Vivie flees gunmen on a moving train or witnesses a brutal assault. The latter scenes feel more visceral and arresting than the former, in which she expounds on the importance of spaying strays, for instance, or tearfully mourns her pet. As the novel follows Vivie into adulthood, the pacing begins to slow as the story meanders through various loosely connected snippets, although cats continue to be a major feature. Nonetheless, the author’s prose offers strong, memorable imagery: “In the moonlight, Vivie stared out across the distant field at the chevaux-de-frise. The large, wooden-spiked, knife-rest barriers lined the acreage as though a child had taken a fat brown crayon and drawn giant asterisks across the expanse.” Despite the story’s rough edges, Caruthers reveals stalwart empathy and admiration, not just for her friend, but for anyone who seeks to make positive change in a world of suffering.
An engaging read, particularly for cat lovers, and a promising debut.Pub Date: July 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68433-527-5
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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