A nimble political satire that should appeal to Americans of every stripe.
A bomber targets Georgia’s highway billboards in this humorous debut novel.
While passing through Georgia on a deserted interstate, Chuck Givens sees a flash in the distance, then more along the road. Suddenly, something pierces his arm, and he thinks he’s been shot. At Kennestone Hospital, he learns that shrapnel injured him. One hundred bombs that detonated along Georgia’s interstate highways attacked billboards, some owned by Veteran Outdoor Advertising. Inspector Seamus O’Reilly of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation heads the case and must work with the Worthington family, which runs VOA. This includes Scott, introverted and divorced, and Tom, an Afghanistan War veteran who’s currently missing. Georgia Gov. Skip Murray, meanwhile, must resolve this possible terrorist threat without torpedoing his chances of reelection. Making this difficult are Congressman James “Bubba” Baker and an oafish American president obsessed with Twitter. Then, two groups try to claim credit for the attack—Green War and Make America Beautiful Again. How does the American Liberation Militia, situated on an old plantation and filled with White supremacists, factor in? When Tom awakes in the group’s company, justice begins a long journey to fruition. Bancroft’s novel is a rich political satire reminiscent of books by Christopher Buckley, the author of Thank You for Smoking (1994). Deft portraiture introduces each character, from politicians to militiamen like Jerry Ray, whose time in the Army was like a “liberal slumber party,” tainted by the presence of “women, Blacks, gays, and even a Muslim.” The theater of politics is captured when Murray’s aide tells him to look rugged and “Think of W and 9/11.” A broader sense of humor gives readers O’Reilly, whose Haitian Irish ancestry fuels his pride in America. Bancroft lauds Atlanta’s “trees, hills, and...old neighborhoods with tree root-cracked sidewalks” that “gave it a certain charm. The city was large” but had “secret, peaceful oases where one could hide.” Some coarse language seeps in, barely marring the romance of Tom Sawyer–esque protagonists battling politicians. The finale opens the door for further mischief.
A nimble political satire that should appeal to Americans of every stripe.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73754-640-5
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Robert W. Bancroft
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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