Compelling…The experiences, perspectives, and secrets of a French family during the Nazi occupation and after World War II… The novel successfully portrays the indelible impact of the war on people who lived through it.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Abigail DeWitt shows how one generation’s experience is transferred to the next generation. News of Our Loved Ones is a war story that studies the war with the help of the psychological scars its victims suffer from. It is absolutely mesmerizing.” — Washington Book Review, “Best Novels to Read This Fall”
“In an age of novels where not much happens, DeWitt packs in enough narrative in a short space that would normally keep a multi-volume series running for years. News of Our Loved Ones ponders questions of love, loss, family and the long-reaching impact of war.” — Wilmington Star News
“An effective and affecting tale of wartime loss and the way that weight of sorrow is held through generations…DeWitt writes in spare prose and has a knack for lovely turns of phrase…Moving.” — Publishers Weekly
“What a beautiful, haunting novel Abigail DeWitt gives us...These are stories of love and great loss, of memory, of scars, of the devastating force that is war...of how people and families endure, keep going and find new reasons to live...DeWitt writes beautifully, poetically, with great attention to detail that brings the scenes to life and makes the memories and emotions all the more poignant…a book to be savored.” — Greensboro News & Record
“News of Our Loved Ones is beautifully written work, that untangles the fabric of family, and follows each thread through time, to where meaning is forged from chaos.” — Simon Van Booy, award-winning author of Father’s Day
“DeWitt’s beautiful and honest novel captures the full force of families spanning decades, wars, and oceans. Each character offers up shards of their existence until a radiant mosaic of deep longing, personal mythmaking, and remarkable endurance emerges. These characters brave the search for love, decency, and peace alongside the specter of loss. Yet the driving mystery here is not how sorrow hews us through time, but the resurgent heart’s ability to pass so much light from one generation to the next. This powerful book will imprint itself on readers.” — Devin Murphy, national bestselling author of The Boat Runner
“Told in multiple voices and spanning generations, Abigail DeWitt’s News of Our Loved Ones is a novel of astounding beauty, empathy, and eloquence. ‘Most of the world will be too young to imagine that you ever really has a life,’ laments one character. But that is not the case: here is life. And here is a book that belongs on the shelf with Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, and all of our other great works of war and peace.”
— Mark Powell, author of Small Treasons
"Abigail DeWitt's News of Our Loved Ones is a story of old Europe, of a tumultuous time that shifted borders, loyalties, and family order. But it is also an enduring story of love, secrets, denial, and redemption. Each word she writes is imbued with beauty: what emerges is a delicate tableau of darkness and light; village dusks and impulsive chances. Above all, it's a story of a strong woman, a free woman, and her fractured memories. If Simone de Beauvoir were alive today, she would write like this." — Janine Di Giovanni, author of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria
“Lyrical and haunting.” — Lilith
DeWitt’s beautiful and honest novel captures the full force of families spanning decades, wars, and oceans. Each character offers up shards of their existence until a radiant mosaic of deep longing, personal mythmaking, and remarkable endurance emerges. These characters brave the search for love, decency, and peace alongside the specter of loss. Yet the driving mystery here is not how sorrow hews us through time, but the resurgent heart’s ability to pass so much light from one generation to the next. This powerful book will imprint itself on readers.
Told in multiple voices and spanning generations, Abigail DeWitt’s News of Our Loved Ones is a novel of astounding beauty, empathy, and eloquence. ‘Most of the world will be too young to imagine that you ever really has a life,’ laments one character. But that is not the case: here is life. And here is a book that belongs on the shelf with Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, and all of our other great works of war and peace.”
Lyrical and haunting.
What a beautiful, haunting novel Abigail DeWitt gives us...These are stories of love and great loss, of memory, of scars, of the devastating force that is war...of how people and families endure, keep going and find new reasons to live...DeWitt writes beautifully, poetically, with great attention to detail that brings the scenes to life and makes the memories and emotions all the more poignant…a book to be savored.
News of Our Loved Ones is beautifully written work, that untangles the fabric of family, and follows each thread through time, to where meaning is forged from chaos.
In an age of novels where not much happens, DeWitt packs in enough narrative in a short space that would normally keep a multi-volume series running for years. News of Our Loved Ones ponders questions of love, loss, family and the long-reaching impact of war.
Abigail DeWitt shows how one generation’s experience is transferred to the next generation. News of Our Loved Ones is a war story that studies the war with the help of the psychological scars its victims suffer from. It is absolutely mesmerizing.
"Abigail DeWitt's News of Our Loved Ones is a story of old Europe, of a tumultuous time that shifted borders, loyalties, and family order. But it is also an enduring story of love, secrets, denial, and redemption. Each word she writes is imbued with beauty: what emerges is a delicate tableau of darkness and light; village dusks and impulsive chances. Above all, it's a story of a strong woman, a free woman, and her fractured memories. If Simone de Beauvoir were alive today, she would write like this."
What a beautiful, haunting novel Abigail DeWitt gives us...These are stories of love and great loss, of memory, of scars, of the devastating force that is war...of how people and families endure, keep going and find new reasons to live...DeWitt writes beautifully, poetically, with great attention to detail that brings the scenes to life and makes the memories and emotions all the more poignant…a book to be savored.
What makes this novel compelling is the compression of the story, the variety of points of view and the sheer elegance of DeWitt’s prose as she transforms her own family’s history—and world history along with it—into a powerful act of fiction…So deeply imagined are the characters and the settings that the reader…is completely overwhelmed by the beauty and the terror.
With masterful artistry, DeWitt weaves together the individual narratives of relations both during WWII and for decades afterward, creating a multilayered narrative of survival and redemption…Each story can stand on its own, but together they offer a powerful kaleidoscopic view of the many ways war takes its toll and the small moments of beauty it nevertheless contains.
DeWitt is ambitious with her latest novel, told from several perspectives through time, ranging across France to America and back again. The lives of her characters intertwine in a widening maze of infidelity, loss and secrecy, as the war links generations together as much as it tears those bonds apart…DeWitt’s strengths lie in keen emotional observation and the portrayal of her characters’ inner turmoil. She poetically illuminates her characters’ lives, weaving in and out like a knitting needle through wool.
10/08/2018
DeWitt (Lili) explores how the American invasion of Normandy changes the destiny of one family in this moving tale of sorrow reverberating across generations. During four years of Nazi occupation, when the people of Caen were forced to choose dangerous resistance or shameful cooperation, the Delasalles have survived by keeping a low profile as their Jewish neighbors are arrested or sent to death camps. Sixteen-year-old Yvonne sees out the war in Caen with her family, but her younger sister, Genevieve, has been sent to Paris to live with her aunt in order to try out for the music conservatory. When the Allies are on the brink of liberating France, Yvonne and her mother and grandmother are all killed in an air strike. Black sheep Genevieve leaves her descendants a legacy of half-truths and blank spots about the family. Tracking backward in time, the book alternates chapters among the Delasalles, exploring their lives leading up to the war. Later sections feature other voices, including future generations of the Delasalle family struggling to uncover the past and deal with the remaining trauma of a family broken by war. DeWitt switches between the occupation and the postwar period with mixed effect. She writes in spare prose and has a knack for lovely turns of phrase (“Mathilde herself is my only clear memory of Paris”), but the separate sections rarely feel distinct in their voices. Still, this is an effective and affecting tale of wartime loss and the way that weight of sorrow is held through generations. (Oct.)
