A darkly cutting investigation of dysfunction in which the kids, more often than not, are way sharper than the parents.
Against the backdrop of the 1970s gasoline crisis, members of a mid-Atlantic family identified only as the father, the mother, the boy, and the girl struggle with separation and its attendant fears in this debut novel.
"When things separate, they double," the kids discover after their distant father moves into his own apartment and, soon enough, begins sharing it with a waitress from a local restaurant. Suddenly, the boy and girl have two homes, two mother figures, and two beds. (The boy, exceptionally bright for a 7-year-old, thinks he dreams differently in the full-size than in the twin.) When their overwhelmed mother becomes involved with a drab man named Cliff, the boy and his nearly 10-year-old sister have Marcus, Cliff's spouting-off adolescent son, to contend with. Quietly unsettling details accrue: The sleepless girl hears repetitions of “how? how? how?” in her brother's oscillating room fan; the boy hears car crashes outside his bedroom window a year after two teens in the area died in an accident; the children's margarita-drinking Florida grandmother tosses off casually hurtful remarks. A master of narrative control, Varallo (Everyone Was There, 2017, etc.) creates the kind of page-turning suspense you don't expect in a book like this. Potential dangers abound: the creepy guy on the bicycle the girl keeps spotting; the gas-powered mower the boy teaches himself to use, on his own; Marcus' fondness for setting things on fire. The resilient children will emerge wiser and stronger from their ordeals. That likely won't be the case with their misguided parents, who don't know how to stop running on empty.
A darkly cutting investigation of dysfunction in which the kids, more often than not, are way sharper than the parents.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60938-665-8
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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