by Robert Speigel ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2021
A somber but insightful portrayal of addiction and a harrowing past.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
In this novel, a dying woman takes a spiritual journey through her tortured life and her complicated family origins.
Anxiety and loneliness plague 30-something Mira Shaw. She’s got a primo Seattle condo and a steady paycheck thanks to her business developer job at Amazon. But a harsh childhood, which included rape, has pushed Mira toward addiction. She wafts through the “dreamy fog” of oxys and dabbles in harder drugs as well, like cocaine. One day, her estranged mother compounds her life further with shocking news: Mira’s father, who she believed died years ago during a special-ops mission to assassinate Saddam Hussein, is alive but now dying of cancer. As Mira soon learns, her family, starting with her maternal grandparents, harbors a few alarming secrets. It’s a lot to take in, and, sadly, the distraught woman overdoses. As EMTs fight to save her, Mira’s spirit floats outside her body. She enters an “in-between place,” where a spirit guide takes her to dark, painful memories as well as the past lives of her relatives. Mira tries illuminating her family’s murky history and her own past while overcoming deeply rooted feelings of guilt. Though Speigel keeps Mira’s out-of-body experience largely ambiguous, he deftly addresses profound themes. Religion, for example, is not only a way characters try to understand life’s meaning, but also a possible explanation for what’s happening to Mira (her guide may be divine). At the same time, the author grounds the story with a realistic depiction of the endless torment caused by drug abuse. Mira may have easy access to drugs, but she incessantly needs them for energy and to calm herself down, sometimes one dose after another. Despite her troubles, the protagonist boasts an appealing bluntness. For example, as her spirit witnesses increasingly confusing images, Mira pleads with the guide to let her “finish dying and move on.”
A somber but insightful portrayal of addiction and a harrowing past.Pub Date: April 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-937977-08-8
Page Count: 243
Publisher: Speigel & Associates Incorporated
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
243
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Kristin Hannah
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2024
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
29
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2024
New York Times Bestseller
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
More by Sally Rooney
BOOK REVIEW
by Sally Rooney
BOOK REVIEW
by Sally Rooney
BOOK REVIEW
by Sally Rooney
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.