A bracing literary investigation of war and its emotional ramifications.
A collection of short stories explores the experiences of American soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mothers fearing for their safety, and veterans struggling at home.
Mujica’s son, Mauro, served in Iraq in the military, an adventure that she experienced as an emotional ordeal. Even after he safely returned, she continued to obsessively imagine what it was like to serve in combat conditions abroad. She was desirous for war stories since her son persistently avoided discussing his own. She eventually got deeply involved in providing help for veterans facing challenges, a labor of love that became a fount of inspiration for these 18 tales. At the thematic heart of this assemblage is the fearful concern of a mother confronted by the inscrutability of her son’s service. In one tale, a mother greedily consumes the anecdotes of a soldier, an antidote to her own son’s reticence: “I didn’t want him to stop talking. My own son had never told me anything at all about the war, and I was ravenous for information.” Mujica also adopts the perspectives of the soldiers as well as delivering a female viewpoint. In one story, former Army medic Sandra Winifred O’Reilly is humiliated by a dogmatically pacifist professor in medical school. The stories evince a gritty verisimilitude, which is unsurprising since the author explains that they are “all based on actual events, but they are also products of my own obsessive imaginings.” But Mujica is sometimes too conspicuous in her efforts to achieve emotional poignancy. She can create a didactically artificial timbre, as if she’s presenting readers a moral lesson of some kind. In addition, some of the moments seem melodramatic. For example, consider this military interrogator’s first impression of an Iraqi woman he questions: “It was because Calla was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Even more beautiful than his wife. He didn’t want her to be married. He didn’t want her to belong to someone else.” Still, these stories are generally authentic and affecting.
A bracing literary investigation of war and its emotional ramifications.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Living Springs Publishers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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