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
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
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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