A predictable plot with characters who fail to evoke sympathy.
In alternating chapters, an unhappy couple reveals their marital woes.
In her unsatisfying fourth novel, Nixon (Jarrettsville, 2009, etc.) chronicles the deteriorating marriage of 52-year-old Ray Stark, a famous poet, and Abigail McCormick, 60, a literature professor. Ray, who wants to “disrupt” language, grew up among miners in West Virginia with an abusive mother; Abby, a stickler for correct grammar, comes from San Francisco wealth. They live on opposite coasts: Ray teaches part time at Brown, where he covets a full-time professorship, proof of recognition by the Ivy League. Abby teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, where she spends free time riding her beloved horse and tooling around in her Porsche. Both have physical problems: Abby has lupus, Ray’s heart is enlarged, compromising its ability to pump blood. He is always in pain; stress makes Abby’s symptoms flare, and stress abounds after Ray, apparently suffering from a stereotypical midlife crisis, confesses that he has fallen in love with a student. Will he stay with Abby or choose 30-year-old Tory? That shopworn question propels the plot. It’s hard to see why either woman wants him: he is disgruntled, angry, envious of friends’ successes; moodiness gives way to rages. Tory is so slightly sketched that the reader has no idea what she sees in Ray, nor, apart from her youth, what he sees in her. Although Abby is turned off by Ray’s “coal-mine manners” and his preference for movies featuring “exploding heads, zombies, or aliens,” although he denigrates her interest in literary theory, berates her for spending money on her horse, and accuses her of neglecting him, she yearns to save the marriage. Self-medicating with Ambien and alcohol, Abby repeatedly, and almost lethally, blacks out; Ray, suspicious of doctors, refuses to face the prospect of a heart transplant. But it’s hard to care about characters who are one-dimensional, as are their assorted friends. Especially grating is Ray’s friend Johnny, a poet, a womanizer, and a boor.
A predictable plot with characters who fail to evoke sympathy.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61902-949-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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