A complex and often engaging novel about temptation and ethical quandaries.
In Ehrenberg’s debut novel, a doctor and patient adapt to their changing circumstances by finding solace in each other.
Seasoned clinical psychologist Avery Frontiera has a new, court-ordered patient, Clare Thomas Lane, who loves breaking rules, struggles with kleptomania, and would rather be anywhere but a therapist’s couch. The strict boundaries of the psychologist-patient relationship are blurred from their very first session, when Clare finds Avery’s negative pregnancy test in the private office bathroom. Despite this unorthodox beginning, they make progress and begin to trust and even like each other in the ensuing months. Clare gains insight into her compulsion to steal, addresses the early loss of her mother, and deals with her biological father’s rejection through various methods, including dream analysis, free association, and art therapy; Ehrenberg’s handling of the psychoanalysis process in these scenes is expert and delicate. As Avery goes to her own therapy sessions, readers learn about her miscarriage years before and her haunting suspicion that her husband, Roland, was actually relieved by it and may be hiding something from her. She and Clare learn a lot from each other as they go through life-changing transformations, but they can only interact during their 50-minute sessions. When Clare brings in a positive pregnancy test as her “show and tell” item of the week and asks Avery to adopt her baby, their relationship is put to the test—as Avery is considering saying yes even though it could jeopardize her career. Over the course of the novel, Ehrenberg expertly orchestrates several different characters and plotlines, which all meet in a surprising place; she also ably gives even the most unlikable characters sympathetic qualities. At times, the narrative feels slow and slightly unfocused as it bounces among Avery’s, Clare’s, and Roland’s stories, and the ending feels a little too tidy and optimistic. Overall, though, this is a strong character study about how people react when backed into a corner.
A complex and often engaging novel about temptation and ethical quandaries.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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