A pensive and frequently compelling supernatural drama of mothers and daughters.
A middle-aged mother sifts through the heartbreak and trauma of her past to find herself in Garcia’s spiritual novel.
This debut work begins with a haunting prologue, set near a cold cemetery in 1958. Marina, who’s “not yet a teenager,”is arguing with her mother, Cheralena, about a mysterious lie that’s torn their family apart; she then flees through the dark graveyard just outside their home. She reaches toward the sky and begs to be taken away and its suddenly lifted into the air “like a puppet on a string.” In a similarly jarring manner, in the present day, readers abruptly join a woman named Teresa who’s traveling to Florida from New York with her husband, Michael. Feeling unfulfilled and alone, with her only daughter off at college, she’s decided to chase a lifelong dream of renovating an old property and turning it into a bed-and-breakfast for her to host—a fine profession for someone who wants to be needed. Although her seemingly perfect spouse has his doubts, Teresa is adamant that the B&B is her calling—especially after she lays eyes on Villa Cheralena, a sprawling, picturesque property with vast halls, a mysteriously locked iron gate, and a sordid history. After she moves in, chilling dreams begin to plague her of running through a cemetery, of drowning, of fire, and of other strange things. She somehow knows that these are more than simple dreams and decides to unearth the mysteries of Villa Cheralena, no matter how many ghosts—figurative or otherwise—she may discover there. Over the course of this novel, Garcia truly excels at conveying rich themes of family, trauma, womanhood, and finding one’s sense of purpose on every page. The plot proceeds at an even pace, and each scene feels thoughtfully developed and often captivating. The narrative point of view does change sporadically and sometimes without clear reason, which can be unnecessarily confusing at times. However, the seductive story at the heart of the work shines through despite such issues, and it’s more than enough to keep readers following Teresa on her journey toward her truth.
A pensive and frequently compelling supernatural drama of mothers and daughters.Pub Date: March 22, 2023
ISBN: 9798387313905
Page Count: 273
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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