Adheres scrupulously to the motto “first, do no harm.”
The latest of Taylor’s Irish Country Doctor series, this time a prequel depicting protagonist Fingal O’Reilly’s med-student days.
The extended flashback which takes up most of the book begins when Fingal, on his way home to Ballybucklebo, the Ulster village where he is a family doctor, stops at the scene of an accident: Donal Donnelly, Ballybucklebo’s lovable ne’er-do-well, has crashed his motor bike and suffered head trauma. While monitoring Donal’s condition at a nearby hospital, Fingal recalls his clinical training at Trinity College, serving indigent patients from Dublin’s slums. Fingal’s literature professor father was so opposed to Fingal’s chosen career that he refused to bankroll his son’s education, forcing Fingal to spend four years in the merchant marine to earn the tuition. His long-suffering mother, who’d dreamed of being a physician herself, encourages Fingal and eventually his father comes around. At school, Fingal weathers a series of scrapes in between pints of Guinness at the local pub with his three best friends. He ponders getting engaged to Kitty, a student nurse, but failing an exam is enough to convince him that he needs to forego romance for studying. Fingal raises some hackles because he sees his patients as people, not cases: he mourns when his first cardiac patient cannot be saved, and finds a job for an impoverished veteran whom he treated for pneumonia. When his father is diagnosed with leukemia, Fingal wonders if he will live long enough to see his son graduate. Although it will appeal to faithful followers of the series, this book suffers from a plodding pace and a lack of suspense. (There’s never any real question about whether Fingal will earn his degree, or whether he and Kitty will wind up together.) As with other volumes, the principal appeal is in the dialects, local color and, for fans of medical fiction, the detailed descriptions of diagnoses and treatment regimens, both present-day and pre–World War II.
Adheres scrupulously to the motto “first, do no harm.”Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2673-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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