The rollicking, sometimes frightening, in-the-end surprisingly moving evolution of a submariner into a mensch.
A raunchy, darkly funny, unusual coming-of-age novel set largely underneath the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
David, nicknamed “Dead Man,” is a U.S. submarine radio operator nearing the end of his hitch. On the one hand, he feels keenly the tedium, the fear, and the cramped dark rigidity of life in the Navy; there’s the tug to go home and get on with the life others have envisioned for you. Against that, though, there’s the secret, profane, addictive, uproarious rapport that develops in the deep sea, in Dead Man’s beloved “steel tube of dumb,” created by the combination of claustrophobia and camaraderie. Murphy playfully and persuasively recreates the scabrous, hilarious, often juvenile sociolect of these young submariners, the language of young men barking and fronting. Dead Man tries hard to think of his experiences as a kind of idyll, but it’s an idyll on a razor’s edge: The casual violence (sometimes almost joyous) and little upwellings of insanity (colorful, the stuff of anecdote) can’t be contained. His closest friend on the ship, Grenadier, tries to commit suicide. The malign ship’s doctor pressures Dead Man to surveil his other close friend, Tintin, who’s suspected of being a Chinese spy. Then Grenadier drowns, and Dead Man—being punished by Doc both for noncooperation and because he knows that the doctor was drugging Grenadier to keep him docile—finds himself exiled from the sub and on base duty in Guam as Covid descends. The book’s second half depicts Dead Man’s turbulent, reluctant return to David: the trip home, mustering out, and the transition to a midwestern campus where he feels utterly out of place. He’s haunted at first by the needling ghost of Grenadier, who seems mostly to want to goad him to give college a try. Once David (or “Death Man,” as a new friend garbles the nickname) arrives and after a few months starts, tentatively and precariously, to find friends, Tintin—an agent of id and rage and chaos—arrives to sow destruction, and to make it clear to David that these two worlds aren’t compatible. He will have to choose.
The rollicking, sometimes frightening, in-the-end surprisingly moving evolution of a submariner into a mensch.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781648211355
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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