Engaging and introspective.
The day of a woman’s 60th birthday becomes a kaleidoscope of encounters with the significant people in her life.
Ana Koehl has put her degree in social work and her master’s in literature to marketable use as a “manuscript therapist” who whips her clients' texts into shape. On April 28, 2017, her birthday, she has arranged her day to see all her favorite people in New York City before a large family dinner: There's her best friend, Fiona, whom she’s known since grad school; her husband, Henry, an anesthesiologist who manages his chronic pain with medical marijuana, which has caused distance between the two spouses; her lover, Lance, with whom she’s been having an affair for seven years; and her adult child, Simon, who is rapidly changing before her eyes. Yet scattered into Ana’s day are other appointments she feels obligated to keep: calling her abrasive mother, who has sent a birthday email noting the financial costs of raising Ana; seeing her brother, George, who is both distant and dismissive; and meeting with one of her clients, a writer struggling with how to bring her book manuscript into final form. Ana’s account of her day is interspersed with third-person sections told by other people in her life. Gornick has written a novel in the vein of Mrs. Dalloway (which Ana reads throughout the day), structured on the progression of one significant day while also moving through time in the alternating sections to show how some of Ana’s complex relationships coalesced into their current forms. Ana is a richly developed main character surrounded by an intriguing supporting cast (though there might be slightly too many sub-storylines) in this thoughtful meditation on how time affects the bonds of family, friendship, and romance.
Engaging and introspective.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781684421398
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Keylight Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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