An often warm, if tonally inconsistent, work about finding inspiration where one least expects it.
In Broome’s debut novel, a nonreligious young woman falls for a charismatic fundamentalist.
Nikki Lowe has been a public school biology teacher in Jackson, Mississippi, for three years, but she’s looking forward to a welcome change of pace: At summer’s end, she’ll start teaching literature at a small university. Her one remaining obligation is to attend a science education seminar, and although her friends tease her that she might meet the man of her dreams there, she laughs it off: “She wasn’t on the rebound after a wrenching breakup. She was neutral, which was to say, she was happy being alone.” However, she ends up meeting a handsome, poetry-quoting man named Cory Thomas at the conference. They hit it off wonderfully during subsequent dates, even after Nikki, who’s not religious, learns that Cory is a devout Christian. “What if he asks me to go to church?” she asks herself, coming to the conclusion that she can “just go through the motions like everyone else.” Things are complicated by the fact that Nikki just recently fought a long battle at her old school with a creationist faculty member who was told that “creationism is not science. It’s faith-based, and it belongs in church, not the state-supported classroom.” One of Nikki’s friends even says that “Christianity hates knowledge. Always has.” However, she sets aside her reservations when Cory invites her to become a nature counselor at Silverbridge, a summer camp that he runs for Christian girls. Nonetheless, plenty of drama ensues.
“I suppose the best description of someone like me is secular humanist, but I don't say that with a great degree of certainty,” Nikki tells the friendly family of Silverbridge’s groundskeeper. “I reserve the right to be spiritual. I love mystery.” Broome does a fine job of providing such mystery for her, and making it believable; he also convincingly portrays the protagonist’s subtle spiritual awakenings during her brief time at Silverbridge, as she teaches a group of young girls and learns about their problems and dreams. The book’s opening feints toward a fairly simple Christian-conversion plot quickly give way to something much more intriguing, as Nikki discovers darkness at Silverbridge. Broome has a smoothly natural narrative voice and a talent for conveying characters with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of believability. Even comparatively minor players—the friend who looks after Nikki’s dog while she’s away, the live-in girlfriend of Nikki’s aunt—are effectively brought to life. Intriguingly, Cory is the only character who never quite seems to ignite, but Nikki herself is such a well-turned figure that this fact isn’t sufficient to sink the book’s latter sections. Some of what unfolds in the second half of the book, which includes shocking violence, verges on excessive melodrama; indeed, that melodrama is a large part of what makes Cory unconvincing as a character. However, the story of Nikki’s development more than compensates for this, making for a compelling reading experience.
An often warm, if tonally inconsistent, work about finding inspiration where one least expects it.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-65546-659-5
Page Count: 490
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
