A tale of indulgence and camaraderie that ultimately proves moving.
In this debut novel, some graduates and friends spend their last days at an American college partying before embarking on their separate paths to adulthood.
Having only a weekend of university life remaining, a small group of friends makes plans to celebrate with alcohol, weed, and sex. Justin will be leaving soon for his medical internship while Harry, his roommate and childhood friend, is returning to South Carolina to start a business. They’re pals with Clarence, whose duties as a police officer begin on Sunday, and Trent, who’s notorious for his impressive inability to hold down a job. In fact, Trent has just lost his gig at the smoothie shop and now has no responsibilities during their weekend of partying. Joining the four are Courtney and Ling-Ling. Though they’re all friends, Courtney and Harry have dabbled in casual sex, which is something Ling-Ling and Justin may try if they can move past their awkward timidity. In between bouts of nostalgic reminiscing, the friends go out for drinks while weed dealer Schroeder provides them with a steady supply of buds. They revel in merriment as the Sunday of woeful goodbyes gradually approaches. Cassidy’s unfiltered story delivers frank discussions and explicit sexual acts. But despite the debauchery, the book is often encouraging. Characters, for example, have fond memories of one another; for example, Harry and Justin met in elementary school. Likewise, their banter and mutual jabs aren’t mean-spirited. The story skillfully alternates among the first-person narratives of various characters, including professor Goodkat, who lives and parties like a student. Dialogue is sometimes indistinguishable, as many of the players employ the same slang, but this also prompts well-placed humor. For example, the friends, while getting high, trade drolly profound thoughts: “If two vegans are arguing, is that still considered a beef?” The bold, unexpected ending shows that preparing for every one of life’s events remains an impossibility.
A tale of indulgence and camaraderie that ultimately proves moving.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-54425-0
Page Count: 292
Publisher: M & S Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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