A sometimes-intriguing but longwinded look at day-to-day hospital life.
A hospital engineer keeps a chaotic workplace functioning in Clear’s debut novel.
Phil Stewart is the chief engineer at a hospital that seems to be falling apart. There are plumbing issues, mysterious power outages, and skyrocketing renovation costs, among other issues. Phil solves a series of problems, often fighting against the opposition of the nursing staff. He also has an ailing mother who lives far away, so he moves her to a nursing home closer to his house so he can better see to her care. A new administrator shakes things up at the hospital, and Phil’s biggest source of anguish are the policies of the corporation that owns the facility, which often contradict what’s best for the patients. The hospital also gets hit with Covid-19, and Phil has to deal with an aging workforce at risk and his suspicion that some of the staff don’t know how to operate the equipment he’s responsible for maintaining. He starts to believe that the technology that’s made the staff’s lives easier is also making them less competent, because machines are doing most of their work for them. When Phil’s mother is admitted to a different hospital, he finds it hard to trust those caring for her. As the novel progresses, there are several scenes of long administrative meetings that bog down the proceedings with excessive detail that may not be of much interest to readers who aren’t hospital administrators themselves; for example, there are several scenes just about upgrading hardware in the mental health unit. That said, the sections in which Phil works out solutions to the issues that face him are often engaging. The fact that these moments sit side by side with scenes detailing administrative conferences about body wipes and parking spaces, however, makes the book read more like a hospital-engineering troubleshooting manual than a novel, at times.
A sometimes-intriguing but longwinded look at day-to-day hospital life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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