A bighearted novel of yearning and human decency.
A gay medical student juggles the needs of his partner, family members, friends, and former lovers while trying to find his own path in Yeh’s sequel to A Boy at the Edge of the World (2018).
Daniel Garneau, the narrator, is in medical school, although readers rarely see that part of his life. His partner, David Gallucci, is a bicycle mechanic and a creative, thoughtful soul who comes from a family steeped in culture; his Italian Catholic mother, Isabella de Luca, is a well-known art critic and writer. The action kicks off when David’s estranged sibling, a trans man named Luke, shows up at the couple’s front door. David and Luke’s mother has no idea that one of her sons is gay and the other trans, although a family reunion is on the horizon. Meanwhile, Daniel is trying to integrate his seemingly stable relationship with David into a social life bursting with friends and several significant exes. Before David heads to Italy for two months on a family trip, the couple decides that their relationship will be “open” during that time—an idea that feels “weird” to Daniel. Yeh’s cosmopolitan and sexy novel is mainly plot-driven, but it gives the 20-something central couple enough nuance to make their relationships worth exploring. The narrative is brisk with occasionally abrupt scene shifts, but the characters are consistently appealing in their searches for love and purpose. Parties, rendezvous, and cabaret visits unfold in Toronto, although the Italian vacation might change everything for Daniel and David. The large, multiethnic, and sexually fluid cast of characters is emotionally generous with one another, and they grow and change in authentic ways. Daniel’s sensibility as he learns how relationships can morph and still hold is particularly well rendered. Some may find it tempting to compare the novel to Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series, but Yeh’s theme of “love and ridiculous gratitude” for this “entire ephemeral life” stands as its own beautiful creation.
A bighearted novel of yearning and human decency.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 9781771835411
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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