A teenage athlete strives to overcome a traumatic past in this debut novel.
Phoebe Rose confronts adolescence having no idea who she is. Found at age 4 wandering around her Ohio neighborhood, she’s been raised in a series of foster homes. Maintaining a sense of normalcy in the wake of such upheaval remains difficult, so Phoebe dedicates herself to hockey from a young age. The game has been there when so many of the adults in her life have failed her. A few of her foster parents have been kind (especially the Wilsons, who she hoped could adopt her but were denied permission because they were black and she was white), but mostly, Phoebe has suffered throughout her childhood. Her last foster father, Mr. Jenkins, an evangelical with a mean streak, beat her repeatedly and raped her. When Phoebe sets off for a Minnesota college with a dream to play on its women’s hockey team, she vows to keep her physical and emotional scars to herself. After Phoebe makes the team, she quickly learns that she no longer needs to “keep surviving”—she can be a whole person again. Slowly opening up to her fellow players, Phoebe not only confesses the ordeals of her past life, but also discovers a safe space within the confines of the team. As time passes, Phoebe’s teammates help her to find both love and peace within herself. Neal’s decision to explore Phoebe’s life in a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards is jarring at first—it takes the reader a while to figure out the timeline. But this strategy turns out to be a brilliant stroke of storytelling—it makes the reader feel as disjointed and uncomfortable as Phoebe does. Neal’s plot covers a lot of ground—Phoebe has been abandoned and mistreated while dealing with a chromosomal disorder and questioning her sexuality. Although this could, quite frankly, feel a bit depressing, Neal’s emotionally gripping narrative anchors Phoebe’s problems and prevents them from drifting too far into weepiness. Though most readers have not shared Phoebe’s trials, all should relate to her struggles—they would do well to absorb her story slowly, savoring both her pain and exultant promise.
A triumphant tale of surviving abuse, embracing hockey, and finding love.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Melancholy Donkey Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
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Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy (The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend—the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. There are enough traumas here to fall an average-sized mental ward, but the biggie centers around Luke, who uses the skills learned as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam to fight a guerrilla war against the installation of a nuclear power plant in Colleton and is killed by the authorities. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. There may be a barely-glimpsed smaller novel buried in all this succotash (Tom's marriage and life as a football coach), but it's sadly overwhelmed by the book's clumsy central narrative device (flashback ad infinitum) and Conroy's pretentious prose style: ""There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1986
ISBN: 0553381547
Page Count: 686
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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SEEN & HEARD
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