Former Time journalist Hull’s first novel paints a generic portrait of young love and trench warfare, framed by a bracingly unsentimental depiction of old age. The story moves forward simultaneously on three fronts, all chronicled in the diary of American veteran Patrick Delaney. At age 81, he recalls his experiences as a soldier during WWI, when his best friend, Daniel, died horribly after an assault on the German lines; and his brief, enchanted affair with Daniel’s lover, Julia, whom he met in France in 1928 while attending the dedication of a memorial monument. The battle scenes are adequate, but contemporary writers who venture into this arena must suffer comparison to Pat Barker’s breathtaking trilogy (The Ghost Road, 1995, etc.), and Hull falls short in both imaginative empathy and literary skill. Patrick’s account of his liaison with Julia, conducted as his unloved wife and cherished three-year-old son await him in a Paris hotel, fails to convince us that she’s as fabulous as he thinks. However—and this is a big however—the diary’s 1980 portions, chronicling Patrick’s life in a nursing home, have all the specificity and emotional weight the historical segments lack. Compare the bite of —The older I get, the more out of place I feel, like a weekend guest still loitering around the cottage on Sunday night because he’s got no place else to go— with the blandness of —How perfect she looked . . . with the kind of face you instinctively want to touch and kiss.— The lovelorn noodlings of Patrick and Julia aren—t nearly as interesting as the blunt, bitter depiction of physical decay and psychic regret that plague nearly every inhabitant of the Great Oaks Home for Assisted Living. A death scene there would have been a lot more realistic—and challenging—than the phonily romantic one Hull provides. Pretty stale stuff, but those perfectly pitched nursing-home scenes linger in the memory.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-33375-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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