by D.W. Hogan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 5, 2021
An elegantly written and damning narrative.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
In Hogan’s debut novel, a pregnant teenager’s life is irrevocably changed when she’s sent to a home and school for unwed mothers in conservative 1950s Tennessee.
After 17-year-old Joanna Wilson becomes pregnant, she quickly finds herself in in a Southern gothic nightmare. She suffers physical abuse at the hands of her father, and her married lover, Jack Wyatt, who’s still devoted to his injured wife, sends her off to the Frances Weston Home in Knoxville. It’s a place for young unmarried women to give birth, away from the prying eyes of judgmental Tennessee society; for the women sequestered there, it’s both a schoolhouse and a jail, where the wardens are stoic, “crowlike” nuns. This prisonlike setting, where everything beyond the house’s gardens is off-limits, is fertile ground for Hogan to explore the culture and misogyny of a classist, racist 1950s and ’60s America. The real horror of the home for unwed mothers, however, is not simply its restrictiveness, but what happens to the babies; they’re put up for adoption, no matter what their mothers’ wishes are, and the women never know exactly what becomes of their children. As time passes, the novel follows Joanna and others from the home as they enter adulthood, exploring how they grapple with the trauma of separation. Over the course of the novel, Hogan’s prose is pared down but deliberate, reflecting the staid resilience of her central characters. The narrative, while alarming, is very much grounded in the reality of the time and place in which it’s set. It’s clear that many women in similar situations never received answers about what happened to their children, but in this novel, Hogan does offer a hint of relief. Overall, it’s a narrative that builds slowly, hovering on a photograph as a missing piece in a puzzle, and coalescing in a resounding defense of women’s reproductive autonomy.
An elegantly written and damning narrative.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949116-53-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Woodhall Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
39
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Kristin Hannah
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
33
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.