A unique, emotional novel about lifelong companionship and brutal social injustice.
An intense, uplifting third novel from Greco (Tommy the Quarterback, 2012, etc.) that maps an unlikely friendship as it confronts adulthood, prejudice and the mistreatment of the mentally ill.
Sandy Morelli, an Italian Catholic boy with a hot temper and a big heart, grows up in the poor part of 1950s Youngstown, Ohio. He and his neighbor Rigley Potter develop a close friendship, pretending to be pirates, exploring the wilderness, playing football and baseball, and always sticking together. Some kids tease Sandy for hanging out with a “hillbilly,” but it doesn’t bother him. As he and Rigley grow older, they attend different high schools and Sandy gets involved with football, but they still manage to spend time together on the weekends. Sandy slowly starts to realize, however, that Rigley is in fact mentally challenged. He tries to help his friend assimilate into mainstream young-adult life, even getting him a job as a golf caddy, only to see others brutally bully and tease him. The friends grow apart when Sandy leaves Youngstown to join the military, but they reunite several years later when Sandy gets a job at Wyandotte State Hospital. Throughout the novel, Greco never shies away from moments of brutal intensity, filtering them through Sandy’s tough yet empathetic voice. The author depicts Rigley as childish, but Sandy never patronizes him, as he understands Rigley’s simple, whimsical intellect. The book indicates the passing of time with subtle but accurate regional slang and hints of pop culture, and Greco’s careful pacing of Sandy’s gradual realization of his friend’s challenges will break readers’ hearts. The author takes on heavy, difficult subject matter here but always brings the story back to its foundation: the unbreakable bond between childhood friends.
A unique, emotional novel about lifelong companionship and brutal social injustice.Pub Date: April 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497336513
Page Count: 258
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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