A beautiful story of doomed love, marred only by an unlikable main character.
A woman looks back on her forbidden romance 30 years later.
In 1970s Dublin, the world had not yet changed. Tenants did not dare ask their landladies to repaint their flats; women were not hired as journalists; and priests did not have affairs. Pity poor Louise, then, broke, unemployed and recently abandoned by her priggish English boyfriend. Taking advantage of the free food and wine at a pity lunch paid for by a would-be employer, she drinks way too much and ends up being escorted home by a handsome Canadian monk, Peter, who kisses her goodnight. When he shows up, ostensibly to check on her, they begin the passionate liaison that will set the course of her life. Like their classic predecessors, Héloïse and Abelard, to whom he frequently refers, Peter seeks to educate Louise, an aspiring journalist. Not until tragedy strikes does she smarten up about her life and starts to use contraceptives despite his insistence that doing so compounds their sin. Such pigheaded selfishness is typical of Peter, who treats Louise poorly, blaming her for his lapses and erupting into jealous rages. Only repeated references to his good looks and her newly discovered sexuality explain the ongoing affair. However, it finally helps send her off to a better life, with an unexpected bonus. In graceful, casual prose, Callaghan (Billy, Come Home, 2007, etc.) spins a believable story. But while the author summons ’70s Dublin in telling detail, her Abelard is so bitter and repressed, it’s hard to see the attraction.
A beautiful story of doomed love, marred only by an unlikable main character.Pub Date: May 21, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-86322-388-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A raw and incandescently written foray into fiction by one of our most gifted poets.
A young man writes a letter to his illiterate mother in an attempt to make sense of his traumatic beginnings.
When Little Dog is a child growing up in Hartford, he is asked to make a family tree. Where other children draw full green branches full of relatives, Little Dog’s branches are bare, with just five names. Born in Vietnam, Little Dog now lives with his abusive—and abused—mother and his schizophrenic grandmother. The Vietnam War casts a long shadow on his life: His mother is the child of an anonymous American soldier—his grandmother survived as a sex worker during the conflict. Without siblings, without a father, Little Dog’s loneliness is exacerbated by his otherness: He is small, poor, Asian, and queer. Much of the novel recounts his first love affair as a teen, with a “redneck” from the white part of town, as he confesses to his mother how this doomed relationship is akin to his violent childhood. In telling the stories of those who exist in the margins, Little Dog says, “I never wanted to build a ‘body of work,’ but to preserve these, our bodies, breathing and unaccounted for, inside the work.” Vuong has written one of the most lauded poetry debuts in recent memory (Night Sky with Exit Wounds, 2016), and his first foray into fiction is poetic in the deepest sense—not merely on the level of language, but in its structure and its intelligence, moving associationally from memory to memory, quoting Barthes, then rapper 50 Cent. The result is an uncategorizable hybrid of what reads like memoir, bildungsroman, and book-length poem. More important than labels, though, is the novel’s earnest and open-hearted belief in the necessity of stories and language for our survival.
A raw and incandescently written foray into fiction by one of our most gifted poets.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-56202-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
