A complex but uneven novel of art and mental illness.
An amnesiac returns to Australia to confront her past in Skilbeck’s debut novel.
Ruby Rivers is in Newcastle Jail in New South Wales for a murder that she doesn’t remember committing. Back in London, she was the owner of a posh gallery known for exhibiting “antipodean” art (works from Australia and New Zealand). Ruby and her wealthy husband, acclaimed philosopher Sir Hugo Rivers, made a trip to her native Australia on a search for new artworks. However, she has no memory of living in Australia, as she was somehow struck with amnesia shortly after her arrival in England, where she started a new life several years ago. Ruby only has vague notions of a dark romantic affair and a vision of a woman playing the violin—but once she’s back in Sydney, the pieces of her past start to fall into place. There, a musician and an artist have a shared history with the woman Ruby once was. Their reunion ends in blood, but the identity of the guilty party isn’t so clear-cut. Skilbeck’s prose is as measured as poetry, and the way the narration shifts between different characters provides an almost cubist view of people and events. For example, in Hugo’s memory of the first time he saw Ruby, she was wearing a fur coat: “In an age of hunt saboteurs, animal rights, she stood out like Wanda in Venus in Furs”; later in their relationship, she notes its cost: “Only ten pounds can you believe and twice as much for old raincoats that looked as if they’d come straight off a flasher’s back.” The chapters are intercut with excerpts that address the concept of the fugue state, which lend Ruby’s condition a bit of context. For all its style, however, the story at the center of the novel simply doesn’t feel quite as emotionally stirring as it could be. Skilbeck creates some memorable characters as she whets the reader’s appetite for mystery, but the plot that unfolds never becomes fully engrossing.
A complex but uneven novel of art and mental illness.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-99-227792-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Postmistress Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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