by Kevin Forde ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 2022
A sometimes bleak but engrossing tale of misdeeds and untrustworthy loved ones.
In this novel, an Irishman’s coming-of-age story involves members of his family and their ever expanding criminal records.
A nearly 30-year-old Mickey Collins, hailing from Cork, Ireland, relays his tale from behind bars. At a young age, he learns that crime is simply a part of everyday life. His mother, Tanya, gives jobs to her kids, like drug pickups, and they shoplift clothes with their uncle. Mickey and his older brother, Cillian, get into their own trouble as well, as they sample drugs at their home and (maybe accidentally) burn down an empty building. As years pass, the family’s crimes send the brothers and their sisters to various foster homes before they ultimately go back to Tanya. But as Mickey gets older, run-ins with the law land him in prison. Any time he messes up, as when he supposedly rats out Tanya, his less-than-doting mother berates him mercilessly. Sadly, there comes a point in many criminals’ lives when they have to shift blame onto others to protect themselves. But when Tanya turns on Mickey, it may be out of pure spite. Forde stylizes his novel as a transcription of Mickey’s interviews. As such, the narration meanders, as if Mickey is saying whatever pops into his head. The mostly linear story nevertheless shows clear progression; Tanya becomes more precarious, and adult Mickey’s time locked up is a veritable revolving door. Characters, including Mickey, are generally unlikable, with friends and family members double-crossing one another and rarely owning up to the crimes they commit or find themselves convicted of. Still, humor permeates the absorbing novel, especially Mickey’s unorthodox way of identifying years. As he recalls events, he can only roughly estimate his age (even his current one), and he often gauges the time frame by using his youngest sister (before and after her birth and during Tanya’s pregnancy). It all culminates in an unforgettable open ending that’s prime material for readers to debate.
A sometimes bleak but engrossing tale of misdeeds and untrustworthy loved ones.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73912-080-1
Page Count: 375
Publisher: Spright Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
283
Our Verdict
GET IT
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Kristin Hannah
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.