A relatable Rust Belt tale, but one that suffers from oversentimentality.
In McGruther’s coming-of-age novel, a teenage boy attempts to overcome his dead-end circumstances in a dying town.
It’s 1991, and senior year of high school is no picnic for Pete McCloskey. The 17-year-old begins each morning by attempting to sneak out of the house without waking his violent, alcoholic, 20-something brother, Troy. He then pedals his bike to school, past the closed train-car factory and vacant storefronts of downtown Snydersville, in western New York. Once there, he must make it through each day as a social pariah, hounded by bullies who delight in reminding him that his father is in prison for murder. (Pete’s mom is also gone; she left not long after his dad’s arrest without telling anyone where she was going.) The teen knows that a diploma is his ticket to a better life, but he’s struggling in math, his weakest subject. After school, he works at Stilson’s Food and Bev, the town liquor store, although Troy steals most of his paycheck. Pete has an offer to stay on full time at Stilson’s after he graduates, and he’s planning on accepting it when a minor bicycle accident leads to him spending an afternoon with Morgan Downer, “the most unusual and downright beautiful girl in our class”; he took a spill right in front of her house. The college-bound Morgan plans to become a pediatrician. Their moment of connection stirs a new ambition in Pete to figure out a way to take better control of his life. But is there a way for him to capture Morgan’s affection before she leaves Snydersville behind? And is there a chance that Pete can find a way out himself?
McGruther’s book delivers a highly specific, slightly romanticized idea of the 1990s Rust Belt that readers will recognize from Hollywood films and popular music; one can’t help but picture every one of these characters as wearing jean jackets. Unfortunately, the effect is more John Mellencamp than Bruce Springsteen. While McGruther’s prose is assured and highly readable throughout, it tends to take on a cloying tone, from its depiction of the wholesome, hardworking Morgan to its wistful portrait of Pete’s incarcerated father to its depiction of Mr. Stilson, the sage mailman-turned-liquor store owner. For example, at one point, Pete remembers a lesson that mailman Stilton taught him in his younger years: “‘See this, Pete?’ he’d said, holding up a stack of letters. ‘Each one of these is a story, a connection between people. Never underestimate the power of a simple message shared between people.’” Pete narrates the novel with the hindsight of adulthood, which means the book is filled with melancholic, semi-philosophical observations, such as “It was as if Snydersville was cradled in the valley and watched over by some higher power that kept each of us torn between our desires and our needs.” Although many readers are likely to see something of themselves in Pete’s struggles, the slow, recursive pacing and general lack of incident ultimately make for an unrewarding read.
A relatable Rust Belt tale, but one that suffers from oversentimentality.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798218319731
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Hosel & Ferrule Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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