by Anna Metcalfe ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2023
A powerful, eerie debut novel that investigates stillness and selfishness.
A woman transforms from a junior lawyer into a reclusive fitness influencer.
“I liked watching her,” Elliot says of this novel’s unnamed protagonist. She’s the newcomer at his gym, self-possessed and at ease hoisting heavy kettlebells; he’s a loner who tries to take a creepy video of her while she exercises. An obsession with fitness brings them together. But her goals are unorthodox. “Have you ever wanted to be a plant?” she asks Elliot. What she wants is stillness. “As she became stronger, her movements slowed down,” Elliot says. “She walked slowly, talked slowly. Even her breathing seemed slow.” She will soon retreat to the countryside and become an unusual internet figure, posting sparse videos in which she holds demanding yoga poses for over an hour. Metcalfe’s triptych is written in clean, matter-of-fact prose. The other two narrators are Bella, the protagonist’s artist mother, and Susie, a roommate. Biographical details are unspooled slowly and with deliberateness: The protagonist had a troubled childhood. She dated Paul, a law colleague who grew controlling and locked her in their apartment’s spare room. These things can explain why the protagonist has adopted fitness, but they can’t explain the intense effect she has on the people around her, whom she routinely uses and then discards. “She has a power over the people who find her,” Susie says. “Once you’ve known her, it’s hard to go back to a time before.” The internet will soon help thousands of people know her. Some of her followers abandon their lives and seek the protagonist’s isolation in the countryside, following her mantra: Aloneness can be beautiful. Has she empowered these followers or merely indulged their anti-social tendencies? Has she rediscovered monasticism, or is this a totally modern phenomenon? Metcalfe won’t say, and readers of this excellent novel will stew on these questions for weeks.
A powerful, eerie debut novel that investigates stillness and selfishness.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780593446959
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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