A sweeping, poignant tale of love, war, and the pain of political disenchantment.
An idealistic soldier deployed to Iraq and his new wife wrestle with the emotional fallout of an ugly, protracted war in Gelberg’s (Fertility, 2013, etc.) novel.
Tomas Jorgensen and Sunny Adler were sweethearts in high school, and remained so when they both graduated from college in 2003. In some ways, though, they couldn’t be more different—Tomas is a patriotic West Point cadet, and Sunny is a student at Vassar College, preparing for a career in education. His graduation speech is delivered by Vice President Dick Cheney and offers a rousing call to public duty, while hers is by writer Susan Sontag, who inspires the crowd with a dissident’s critique of government. They marry at the West Point chapel in the Jewish faith—Maj. Arnold Weinstein, a rabbi who serves as the couple’s spiritual mentor, officiates the ceremony—and the two settle into a new life together. In the beginning, their principal challenge is prolonged separation; after Tomas’ first post at Fort Drum in upstate New York, he’s selected for Army Ranger school in Georgia. Sunny throws herself into her new job as a first-grade teacher and into maintaining the household to dampen the pain of his absence. Meanwhile, Tomas, excited and anxious about the prospect of combat, finally gets orders to deploy with his brigade to Iraq. Soon, though, he and his fellow troops are enraged by the incompetence and mendacity of the nation’s political leadership and demoralized by mounting casualties. Gelberg demonstrates extraordinary restraint, allowing the couple’s collective disillusionment to build slowly but affectingly. The tenderness of their love, and its resilience, are truly endearing, and their relationship is captured in simple but often powerful prose. For example, the terrifying possibility that Tomas could die yanks Sunny into a reality that she hasn’t thought through; she tells Tomas before his deployment: “All those field exercises, I knew you loved them. The whole thing seemed like an elaborate version of man-camp.” But that “man-camp” was training for war, and Gelberg goes on to show that both Tomas and Sunny are emotionally unprepared for the danger he faces. Overall, this is a story that transcends political partisanship, and it’s resonant because it manages to be not only topical, but also timeless.
A sweeping, poignant tale of love, war, and the pain of political disenchantment.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5397-7127-2
Page Count: 392
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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