Back to Blog
The wonder emma donoghue book review6/20/2023 Granted, it’s predictable that this mismatched pair will ultimately come to grudging mutual respect and even affection, but Donoghue keeps sentimentality to a minimum and deftly maintains a suspenseful plot. Instead of a leisurely visit to Nice, possibly tracking down the locations of some enigmatic photographs his mother took during the war, Noah is stuck with a foulmouthed, sullen tween who rarely lifts his eyes from his battered phone. With her characteristic storytelling brio, Donoghue ( The Lotterys Plus One, 2017, etc.) sets up a fraught situation with multiple unresolved issues. But Michael's mother is in jail on drug charges-probably taking the rap for Victor, who subsequently OD’d-and the grandmother who was taking care of the boy just died there is literally no one else, says the desperate social worker who phones Noah as a last resort. He plans to celebrate his 80th birthday there, and he certainly wasn’t planning to take along 11-year-old Michael, illegitimate son of Noah’s ne’er-do-well nephew, Victor. Noah hasn’t seen Nice since his mother sent him to join his father in the U.S. Revisiting his birthplace in France, a retired university professor reckons with his past-and, unexpectedly, the future in the form of a great-nephew.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |