by John Matthew Gillen ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 2020
A lyrical but uneven tale about a restless writer.
In this debut novel, a young man searches for meaning and morality in the vast canvas of New York City.
The son of two evangelical Republicans from Virginia—and the brother of two habitual users of psychedelics—John is a struggling writer in New York. But he’s not your average bohemian, in part because his faith in God keeps him away from sex and drugs—at least at first. He stops a girl from beating up her boyfriend on the street, then takes her back to his apartment where they disrobe but don’t sleep together because, to the virgin John, such an act would be “so vacant. There’s no human dignity in it. It’d be worse than masturbation.” Instead, he makes a speech about wanting a wife. (After trying to attack John with a knife, the girl admits to being molested by her uncle.) This is just one episode in this tale of incidental happenings: encountering a man dressed as a Buddhist monk in Times Square, attending a fight club, getting in arguments during jury duty, and going to the opera. John writes stories based on his experiences. In between, he manages a few trips to other places—Graceland, where his hero Elvis Presley lies entombed; a Los Angeles bookstore, where he witnesses a man vomit on the floor—but mostly he just roams New York and reacts to things he sees. Sometimes, his desire to split hairs and lecture people gets him into trouble—like right after Donald Trump is elected president and a fellow New Yorker suspects him of being a Trump supporter (which he never denies). The city challenges John in unexpected ways, forcing him to continuously reevaluate himself, his beliefs, his family, and his past.
Gillen’s prose is conversationally lyrical in the way of the Beats or Charles Bukowski. (He even includes a poem every few chapters.) Sometimes, he strikes upon a compelling image—usually when describing John’s childhood or the members of his family—but more often, the author tries a bit too hard. “I’ve been trying to figure out who Bob Dylan is for years,” John notes about one of his many (predictable) influences, “and it’s like trying to nail ayahuasca smoke to a rainbow waterfall. Like putting God in a box.” John’s project is that he’s seeking real experiences, but mostly it seems as if he’s doing things he thinks are artistic, such as sitting in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, waiting for something profound or colorful to happen. (John claims to have seen Taxi Driver “probably fifty times,” which explains a fair amount about the sort of young man he is.) Gillen’s anecdotes rarely get at any deeper truth or reach a satisfying conclusion. The instance with the naked girl fragments into a rather overripe poem at the end: “I never saw Sarah again. / But I cleaned up the glass. / And the blood. / And— / eventually— / we both died.” The tale includes some uncomfortable ranting about “mass emasculation” and other half-baked ideas, but the book’s main problem is simply that it reads like a 17-year-old’s concept of an artistic novel. While the story aims for grit and wisdom, older readers will find little of interest here.
A lyrical but uneven tale about a restless writer.Pub Date: May 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951937-12-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Epigraph Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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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
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by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2024
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
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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
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