Intriguing and quirky, if sometimes underwhelming, tales.
This collection of short stories explores the bonds between humans and animals.
The tales offered here center on a Polish family and are recounted by Aldek, who, at the opening of the book, is a young boy with conflicting feelings about animals. The volume is divided into four sections. The first, “Poland Stories,” provides a glimpse of the narrator’s younger years growing up under Communism. “Paw, A Zakopane Dog” tells of a cunning family pet who steals a steak from the local cardiologist. Meanwhile, in “Oskar Weasel,” the narrator plans to save a weasel from two boys who pit it against a dog for sport. The book’s second part, “Roxy Stories,” finds Aldek living in America, a husband and father who, in “The Adoption,” surreptitiously acquires a dog called Roxy for the family while his wife is away. The third section, “Marta Stories,” focuses on Aldek’s wife; “Mikimoto Pearls” features the narrator searching for a landmark anniversary gift. The final segment, “Philadelphia Stories,” contains assorted animal-related anecdotes, such as “Sojourner Possum,” in which the unwanted marsupial invades the narrator’s vegetable garden during the Covid-19 pandemic. Roman’s stories are generally lighthearted, with the Polish author displaying a wry wit. When gathering book titles to teach his family about dog ownership, Aldek amusingly includes “Old Yeller…The Incredible Journey, even Stephen King’s Cujo—so they could learn the amazing loyalty and ability of dogs, but also know to stay away from rabid Saint Bernards.” The opening tales demonstrate greater depth, capturing family life intertwined with broader sociopolitical commentary: “The ray of sunshine disappeared in two years as the Party disempowered Solidarity and returned Poland to a Communist gloom.” As the volume progresses, the storylines become increasingly bland and the link to animals more tenuous. In “Mikimoto Pearls,” the author tells readers: “An oyster is definitely an animal….You’ll have to settle for an oyster.” But in “God’s Revelation to Jan the Human,” a laborious story about a contractor with a gambling problem fixing a leaking pipe, Roman concedes: “I am including one human animal in this bestiary.” Despite some humorous moments, this collection veers disappointingly off course as it struggles to hold the audience’s attention.
Intriguing and quirky, if sometimes underwhelming, tales.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8-9857500-0-3
Page Count: 293
Publisher: Chestnut Hill Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2022
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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