An absorbing story of ordinary people trying to find their way.
Reeves’ 100-year saga follows an Italian clan’s travels and travails from the Old World to the New.
In World War I-era Italy, Anna Giove marries Vincenzo Desiderio, the scion of a prominent family in their little village. In 1922, Vincenzo sails to America to seek his fortune in the New World. After a period of years, Vincenzo, now a successful tailor in Philadelphia, sends for Anna. They have a daughter, Rosemarie, who marries Frank; they have three daughters, Kate being the eldest. The family members are haunted by the Catholic Church, both those who are in thrall to the institution and those who are trying (unsuccessfully) to break away. While Anna is timidly skeptical, her mother brings gifts to the friars in the monastery up on a mountain, convinced that she and they can somehow bribe God to spare Anna’s sister, who is dying from influenza. In the New World, Anna and Vincenzo’s (who now goes by Vincent) daughter, Rose, seems more attuned to relaxed American attitudes, but, in fact, despite her middle-class trappings, she is as deeply religious as her Italian grandmother. When her second daughter, Helen, gets pregnant out of wedlock, Rosa sends her away to have (and to give up) the baby, then makes up stories about how that daughter has a glamorous career in Hollywood. Rose’s brother, Vinnie, is a closeted gay man; by the convention of the time he is deemed a “confirmed bachelor.” These narratives are the saddest elements of this “novel in stories,” as Reeves describes the book. Even the more enlightened Kate is not untouched—but the novel’s last line assures the reader this is not a bad thing. Reeves is a successful published writer, as evidenced by the lyrical prose—here Kate struggles in spiritual confusion: “Overhead, a single bird’s insistent chirping sounds like heartbreak”; she finds succor in the “secret song of the ordinary that plays all around her.”
An absorbing story of ordinary people trying to find their way.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781737780861
Page Count: 172
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2024
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
SEEN & HEARD
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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