Janis HallowellRecensioni

The book had me from the beginning, and my only reasoning behind 4 stars vs. more was I wanted more. I felt that author started with a great concept, pulled me into caring and then rushed the ending. I loved reading the different points of view through Chester, Sid & Anna, but sadly the author denied me the one first person point of view I wanted... Francesca's.

I'd love to pick the author's brain as to why she withheld what I thought the most important piece of the puzzle. With it, and just a bit more of a push at the end, I would easily have given this book a 4.½

A homeless man, Chester, living on the streets in Boulder, Colorado, is an ex-professor and present-day schizophrenic. Ronnie owns a restaurant in Boulder and serves free meals to Chester and many other homeless men and women. Ronnie's next-door neighbors are Anne and Francesca Dunn. Francesca helps out at the restaurant. Anne is recently divorced from Francesca's father who has moved to Italy with his new girlfriend. Francesca, 14, misses him desperately and has been exhibiting some concerning behaviors that land her in a "special" school where she meets Sid. Sid is a "cutter," and Sid's mother is an alcoholic and has poor taste in men, and Sid spends a lot of her time care-taking. Chester has a vivid dream where Francesca is shown to him as the Virgin Mary, pregnant with the Christ child. The story of what follows is told through the eyes of Anne, Francesca, Sid, and Chester. The author did an excellent job of bringing the characters to life, and I came to care about all of them, warts and all. The ending is shocking and mundane all at the same time. Very enjoyable and unique read.

I purchased this book at a library sale. It sounded like something different. It was, but I enjoyed it. She touches on several subjects that give you thought and that is what I enjoy in a book. It says it is a book that explores the seductive and distructive power of belief. That pretty much sums it up.

Heartbreaking and unexpected! I really enjoyed the story about the craziness of fame or rather infamy. The characters were interesting and their views give the story so many different layers. All in all, an interesting coming of age story.

Strong plot, but ultimately unsatisfying. I did not ever connect with any of the characters. I found some of the narrative sections too short, and particularly, the character Anne was there solely to provide a counterpoint to the religious aspect of the book. She was a skeptic with a capital S. The main character, Francesca, was enigmatic. I guess like Mary. Hmmm. All in all, I was interested enough to keep going, but I never was "inside" the book at all.

Surprisingly, a good read about a young girl who becomes the Virgin Mary and savior to people in her town.

Denver author Hallowell (author of The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn) has created a character study of a fugitive war protestor from the sixties who’s lived a respectable life as a wife, mother and dentist for thirty-four years since the accidental death of a janitor in a Columbia University Vietnam War protest bombing. At the same time, her brother, Adam, is suffering from MS and recurring flashbacks to his time spent fighting in Vietnam. The pacing is considered and careful and the characterizations are believable, but, overall the story was only mildly gripping. Not bad – just not super compelling. Some war violence in the flashbacks.

An Allegory for Our Times

Janis Hallowell’s The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn takes a surprisingly convincing leap of imagination into the lives of saints, or ordinary people who might be construed as such. I found myself wanting Francesca to be holy, a miracle, just as much as the book’s many needy of heart and/or body did. This wise book, by causing me to recognize that wish in myself, expanded my understanding of the religious impulse. It is not a mindless drive toward mass hypnosis, as I’ve sometimes suspected, but a need to love, surrender and revere. While the writing is as particular and the characters as real as in any realistic novel, the story is also an allegory, showing us, through the homeless Chester, the self-transcendence possible through worship, while also dissecting the corruption that often tempts those closest to worship’s object. Francesca’s best friend Sid is as tragically bound to betray her as Judas was Christ.

SHE WAS

Hallowell is a deft craftswoman, and her novel, an absolutely must read, is a masterful braiding of two counterpoint stories: Doreen the passionate anti-Vietnam war Weather Underground activist who plants a bomb that inadvertently kills a man, and her brother Adam, who serves in that war only to prove to their father that he’s not a coward—neither realizing that their choice will have unintended repercussions which will dictate the shape of their lives.
Vietnam wasn’t the front line for freedom, Adam realizes, or the thumb in the dike of communism, or any of that bullshit. Once you’d been in-country for a week or two you realized that in Vietnam there weren’t any fronts. The only reason you had a gun and were humping those hills for gooks was because Command wished it. And the only way you were going to survive it was to do whatever you had to do and stay as high as possible.
The portrait of Adam, who in the war’s aftermath, is a walking casualty (MS ironically renders him mostly immobile), is riveting, and his honoring of the Vietnamese monks who burned themselves in protest against the war is deeply affecting. The contrasting, counterpoint and back-and-forth between these two story lines is a brilliant move, in which we see the horrific and senseless violence of the war which Doreen in her youthful idealism hoped to prevent. The contrast skyrockets after the war when Adam comes out of the closet and lives his homosexuality honestly and openly, while Doreen, who deeply regrets the death she caused, chooses to go underground and live a lie—hiding her true identity and constructing a good citizen’s productive life as a dentist, a life which is as resoundingly false as it is real.
Hallowell is a master of characterization, setting and plot—all those elements with which one builds a novel, and the contrasting counterpoint and reverse parallelism in the book’s structure is more than compelling—this is a book that keeps you up at night, reading on and on! Go get it!

From the first chapter, I was immersed--like homeless Chester waist-deep in the water and spellbound by the Virgin--in the lovely, strange world of The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn. Janis Hallowell is a writer with a unique sensibility, a magical realist rooted in the luscious sensory lives of her characters: fourteen-year-old Francesca surprised by her own mysterious power, her troubled friend Sid, big-hearted Ronnie, four-year-old Jonah, even the aggravating Rae, and especially Chester, transformed by love. Love runs deep in this book. Perfectly poised between two worlds--plausible explanations lifting off into miracles--this riveting story ultimately comes together in a beautiful truth. I couldn't put it down, and I look forward to reading Hallowell's next book, She Was.

I liked this book it had a good story that drew me in despite the religious aspect. Is she the new virgin, but pharmaceuticals and the abandonment of devotees ended it or was it a delusion?