A novel about getting the old band back together that has heart and humor despite a lack of surprises.
A 30-something accountant considers revisiting his rock-star past.
As the novel opens, Ben Silverman, the successful head of a Boston tax preparation company, is about to join his former band mates in the popular rap-rock group Da Funk for a reunion performance at Roseland in New York City. The band members have all moved on with their lives since Silverman left them eight years ago, just as he has: He’s living with his second wife, landscape architect Ingrid; Ava, his 10-year-old daughter from his first marriage; and his and Ingrid’s infant son, Zack. He can’t really imagine returning to a life of shows and touring, but his manager, Kelly, and his band mates want him to accept a lucrative new offer, and the allure of the past is intensified when Alison Clarke, an old romantic fling, attends his reunion show and wants very much to resume contact with him. These formidable specters from Silverman’s past quickly wreak havoc, creating chaos at home and pushing him to the brink of an early midlife crisis. Wergland wisely crafts Silverman as immediately sympathetic; very early on, readers will find themselves invested in whether Silverman ruins his life by making the wrong choice at a pivotal moment. “He could have married Alison eight years ago,” he finds himself thinking later in the novel, adding, “Until now, he had never looked back.” However, at nearly 300 pages in length, the work is allowed to simmer too long, and several subplot resolutions are likely to strike readers as highly predictable. Still, the fine storytelling spirit, which is emotionally perceptive and wry by turns, ultimately wins the day.
A novel about getting the old band back together that has heart and humor despite a lack of surprises.Pub Date: May 8, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Leviathan Books
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2022
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
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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