A stylish but overwrought first novel about a newly independent woman on an ecological mission.
A chance trip to a local wetland delivers new purpose—and passion—to the life of a long-suffering woman in LaConte’s (Life Rules, 2012, etc.) expansive debut novel set in the early 1990s.
While her husband lies dying, the nearly 60-year-old Hannah Walker finds herself drawn to the Afton Marches—a wild marshland she spots from the window of her spouse’s hospital room. The attraction seems incongruous at first, even to Hannah herself. For decades, her life has been controlled by her overbearing husband, Clay. A corporate lawyer, he persuaded Hannah to give up her volunteer work, and eventually, even her driver’s license and car, so that she could focus on tending to his needs. In her roles—first as a trophy wife and later as a well-heeled member of Connecticut’s country-club set—there was certainly no room for spur-of-the-moment explorations into a swamp “on the wrong side of town.” Yet as Clay’s life ebbs, Hannah’s blossoms through regular visits to the marshland. She meets a new love interest, Leslie Willoes, through her excursions and encourages her closest friends to make their own journeys to the secluded spot. When they learn that an upscale commercial development could destroy the land they love, they agree to fight to preserve the calm, quiet beauty of Afton Marches. But can their band of wetland warriors defeat the forces of corporate greed? And what would failure mean to the spirited Hannah? LaConte writes with a naturalist’s eye. Her passages about a preening heron, a band of hungry orioles, and a fish struggling for oxygen are an intoxicating blend of scientific observation and poetry. Effortless images cascade seductively over one another, drawing in the reader. But used repeatedly, the style turns self-indulgent. One of the book’s sentences includes a numbing 74 words. And while Hannah’s journey of self-discovery is noble and moving, it is also at points tedious, undermining the power of her transformation and the author’s attempts to address important environmental and sociological issues.
A stylish but overwrought first novel about a newly independent woman on an ecological mission.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5153-4365-3
Page Count: 678
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A bold but flawed debut novel.
There’s a mystery, a coming-of-age, abundant melodrama and even more abundant medical lore in this idiosyncratic first novel from a doctor best known for the memoir My Own Country (1994).
The nun is struggling to give birth in the hospital. The surgeon (is he also the father?) dithers. The late-arriving OB-GYN takes charge, losing the mother but saving her babies, identical twins. We are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1954. The Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, was a trained nurse who had met the British surgeon Thomas Stone on a sea voyage ministering to passengers dying of typhus. She then served as his assistant for seven years. The emotionally repressed Stone never declared his love for her; had they really done the deed? After the delivery, Stone rejects the babies and leaves Ethiopia. This is good news for Hema (Dr. Hemalatha, the Indian gynecologist), who becomes their surrogate mother and names them Shiva and Marion. When Shiva stops breathing, Dr. Ghosh (another Indian) diagnoses his apnea; again, a medical emergency throws two characters together. Ghosh and Hema marry and make a happy family of four. Marion eventually emerges as narrator. “Where but in medicine,” he asks, “might our conjoined, matricidal, patrifugal, twisted fate be explained?” The question is key, revealing Verghese’s intent: a family saga in the context of medicine. The ambition is laudable, but too often accounts of operations—a bowel obstruction here, a vasectomy there—overwhelm the narrative. Characterization suffers. The boys’ Ethiopian identity goes unexplored. Shiva is an enigma, though it’s no surprise he’ll have a medical career, like his brother, though far less orthodox. They become estranged over a girl, and eventually Marion leaves for America and an internship in the Bronx (the final, most suspenseful section). Once again a medical emergency defines the characters, though they are not large enough to fill the positively operatic roles Verghese has ordained for them.
A bold but flawed debut novel.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-41449-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.
Hailed as heroes on a stateside tour before returning to Iraq, Bravo Squad discovers just what it has been fighting for.
Though the shellshocked humor will likely conjure comparisons with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five, the debut novel by Fountain (following his story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, 2006) focuses even more on the cross-promotional media monster that America has become than it does on the absurdities of war. The entire novel takes place over a single Thanksgiving Day, when the eight soldiers (with their memories of the two who didn’t make it) find themselves at the promotional center of an all-American extravaganza, a nationally televised Dallas Cowboys football game. Providing the novel with its moral compass is protagonist Billy Lynn, a 19-year-old virgin from small-town Texas who has been inflated into some kind of cross between John Wayne and Audie Murphy for his role in a rescue mission documented by an embedded Fox News camera. In two days, the Pentagon-sponsored “Victory Tour” will end and Bravo will return to the business as usual of war. In the meantime, they are dealing with a producer trying to negotiate a film deal (“Think Rocky meets Platoon,” though Hilary Swank is rumored to be attached), glad-handing with the corporate elite of Cowboy fandom (and ownership), and suffering collateral damage during a halftime spectacle with Beyoncé. Over the course of this long, alcohol-fueled day, Billy finds himself torn, as he falls in love (and lust) with a devout Christian cheerleader and listens to his sister try to persuade him that he has done his duty and should refuse to go back. As “Americans fight the war daily in their strenuous inner lives,” Billy and his foxhole brethren discover treachery and betrayal beyond anything they’ve experienced on the battlefield.
War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-088559-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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