Bittersweet and complicated tales of the heart.
Bogaty offers a collection of short stories dissecting love and relationships.
Though the author’s characters collide in passion, when they strive for deep connection or permanence, they never quite succeed. The unnamed narrator of “In Saint-Rémy And Auvers” loves her partner, Steven, but feels they are opposites emotionally: “He lives on the surface. He doesn’t understand.” Sometimes, there’s an insurmountable age gap. In “But Not For Me” and “Nicky and Cat: A Romance,” the male protagonists are twice as old as their female partners. In both cases, the younger women, inhabiting stages of life different from those of the older men, break off the connections. Throughout the book, characters overlap or reappear. Many are (mostly caddish) lawyers who work at the same law firm and pop up in each other’s stories (Bogaty holds a law degree). Melinda and Michael are characters who recur; “Still Life of Melinda With Wildflowers” captures this duo’s dynamic: passion mixed with a hatred that’s capable of spilling over into physical violence. The sequel, “Boiling Water,” sounds a hopeful note for their future, but after the earlier story, readers can only feel fragile optimism for their bond (“what do you do when you discover that despite being created by God to order for each other, you just can’t seem to get along?”). The author is also a photographer, and his most successful stories feel like snapshots of moments in time. His dialogue is mostly brief and understated, and his descriptions of people and places also use straightforward language. Bogaty has perfected the open-ended conclusion, which, like a photograph, leaves things open to interpretation. Rather than neatly tying up loose ends, these stories sometimes stop in the middle of a conversation, as in “Wanda” and “Nicky and Cat: A Romance,” or in “Abigail At Play,” in which a woman vengefully squeezes her boyfriend’s testicles during a theater performance. The collection invites readers to ponder the many factors that fuel a relationship, and how people seldom seem to choose partners that make sense for them.
Bittersweet and complicated tales of the heart.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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