An engaging and moving collection about the tragic consequences of war.
Three novellas explore the heartbreaking effects of the Vietnam War.
Boatwright’s triptych examines characters who are in some way shaken by the conflict in Vietnam, with a particular focus on how the war results in emotional ripples that ultimately engulf not only veterans and their families, but others as well. The first novella, 1968: Getting Out, follows Toby Woodruff, a 20-year-old anti-war activist who enlists in the Navy to avoid being drafted. But when Toby receives orders to go to Vietnam, he attempts suicide. He is then placed under medical supervision in a hospital ward with hopes of eventually being discharged from the service. Initially, Toby refuses to speak to anyone. As he slowly opens up, he confronts some realizations about himself and his beliefs. The second work, 1982: If I Should Stay, centers on a married couple, Raz and Jane Carter, as they spend Thanksgiving with Jane’s family. The two have known each other since childhood. Despite their history, things have been fraught between Raz and Jane, primarily due to Raz’s drinking. Jane’s two brothers are similarly coping with tough issues: Charlie’s wife left him, and Tom has never been the same since returning from service in Vietnam. Finally, the third novella, 1993: Leaving Vietnam, explores a freelance photographer on assignment in Vietnam. Sarah has never really coped with the death of her brother, Walter, who was killed in the war. His untimely death stopped her from deepening her connection with others. Boatwright’s three works are evocative and highlight how people’s lives often vary from what they expected or desired. For example, while in the ward, Toby muses: “I’m just a guy who wanted to go to college and become an architect and make nice places for people to live…I thought maybe I might be able to do some good in the world, but I screwed up and screwed up and screwed up, and I lost everything.” Through simple but redolent prose, the author also examines how war affects a wide range of souls. Sarah sees the consequences in 1990s Vietnam. Jane and Raz—despite never going to Vietnam themselves—are tragically affected and altered by the war. Overall, Boatwright’s tales are stirring and engrossing, never shying away from uncomfortable subjects.
An engaging and moving collection about the tragic consequences of war.Pub Date: July 3, 2012
ISBN: 9798986434490
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Firefly Ink Books
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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