A debut novel that explores the contours of grief and globalization with conviction.
In the aftermath of her only sibling’s death, an Indian woman builds a life of purpose and connection.
Vega Gopalan was just a teenager when her younger sister succumbed to an illness their family was assured she would overcome. Somehow Vega’s life continues even as her sister’s has ended. She finishes college and pursues graduate work first in her native South India, then in New York. What becomes clear as she moves through her studies and finds friends and lovers is that the grief she carries impacts her ability to form relationships and engage with the world around her. It’s not as simple as grief imbuing her with a fear of abandonment. The loss acts as a film, a barrier between her and the people who wish to know her fully, even as she too longs for life’s intimacies. Over the next decade, she achieves professional success, marries, has a child, divorces, all the while excavating a yearning for kinship that too often eludes her. The story unfolds episodically, in a good way; in Sundar’s hands, the scenes tumble together hypnotically. The book captures a moment in time—before smartphones and social media as we know them today—among a particular set of people who cross international borders for higher education and enticing opportunities. The catch is that their lives can be as circumscribed by capricious visa policies and systemic prejudices as by any personal limitations. This yields a sense of transience; Sundar captures the cascades of smaller griefs as Vega and the people in her universe develop close ties when they overlap in cities and on campuses, then move on for coursework, jobs, fellowships, and family. Several stirring stretches of the novel eclipse the few plodding ones. As the book illustrates, there are always trade-offs.
A debut novel that explores the contours of grief and globalization with conviction.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781668016107
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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