by Julie Wittes Schlack ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 23, 2021
An astute and absorbing study of personal growth, human connection, and the nature of reality.
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In this fictional meditation on truth, art, and propaganda, an aging hippie reevaluates her artistic vision when she takes a job as assistant to an iconic newscaster.
Before arriving at the opulent home of disabled television journalist Peter Bright in the Thousand Islands area of Ontario, Tina Gabler had watched her life follow a not-uncommon trajectory for those who came of age in the 1970s. Leaving behind parental expectations in her home city of New York to join counterculture communities in California and Vermont, then escaping to Canada with a draft-evading boyfriend, she settled into the protean life of a self-employed event planner in Toronto. Now, at the age of 59 in the summer of 2011, she seeks respite from the gig-to-gig grind and an alternative to following her astronomer boyfriend, Carl, on his yearlong residency in the Canary Islands. Peter, once a famous newscaster, is now dealing with aging and the debilitating effects of post-polio syndrome. He needs Tina not only as chef and personal assistant, but also as an aide in organizing his book about “documentary photography and…the manipulation of imagery.” Working for Peter promises Tina not only the prospect of assisting a prominent journalist on a fascinating project, but also the opportunity to reexamine her life and reconnect with her identity as a graphic artist, teasing out the imagined stories captured in photos. In its questioning of art as both representation and a distortion of reality, Schlack’s novel is sincerely thoughtful while also being warmly personal in its study of the struggle to find meaning both in cultural iconography and individual life experiences. Layers exist throughout the text, in the diverse generational views as well as the uses of photographic and video imagery—from Peter’s “factual” journalistic pictures to Tina’s emotive graphic representations and Carl’s quest to define the elusive dark matter of the universe. The book’s title contains layers of meaning in terms that describe human passion and evasiveness and techniques of photo manipulation. As Peter is quickly burning the last of his life’s essence, Tina works to stop dodging her past, her future, and her own unique vision.
An astute and absorbing study of personal growth, human connection, and the nature of reality.Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68433-842-9
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2021
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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New York Times Bestseller
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 Percival Everett ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
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
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