by Smiley McGrouchpants Jr. Esq. III ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 2021
A bold but confounding collection of short humor pieces.
A volume of flash fiction skewers celebrities, politicians, and pop-culture figures of yesteryear.
McGrouchpants does not hold back in these short works, which include a mix of comic pieces, prose poems, and microstories. There are confessional celebrity monologues, fake advice columns, satirical case histories, Hardy Boys parodies, and a slew of other forms, all of which the author uses to shock and surprise readers into laughter (or some other reaction). Most are no longer than a page, and several are actually shorter than their own titles. A fair number of the pieces revolve around former Vice President Dick Cheney: Cheney claiming to have introduced Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson; Cheney volunteering to serve as a “human latrine” for troops in Iraq; Cheney recounting the time he ate a bag of goat penises on his front porch with Wilford Brimley. The longest story by far is the 28-page “A Bite-Sized Piece,” which alternates between a woman’s account of dating an erratic man known as the Argyle Scot and instructions for how to remove a leech from one’s body. A pen name like McGrouchpants is likely to insulate the author from accusations of misanthropy, but even so, the tales aren’t often funny as much as they are petulant or mocking. There’s a palpable animosity directed toward academics, sex workers, and columnist Dan Savage, among others. Every page is a surprise, and there is a certain delight in that. But there is little enjoyment to be had from the stories themselves. The jokes are extremely scatological. Many make sense only on the level of Dada or absurdism. The piece “ ‘Why Christopher Hitchens Doesn’t Matter,’ by George Orwell’s Reincarnation, Now a Six-Year-Old Living Outside Leeds,” for example, reads in its entirety: “ ‘Oh, blimey, guv’nor, he got it all wrong!’ ‘What are you studying in school?’ ‘Geography! It's my favorite subject!’ ‘What do you like to do for fun?’ ‘Football! Me and me mates like to toss it around!’ ‘Really?’ ‘Naw! We hit the pipe!’ The End.” Is that a commentary on Hitchens or Orwell? Or Britain? Or elementary school curriculums? As with most of the pieces, many readers will be left befuddled and slightly annoyed.
A bold but confounding collection of short humor pieces.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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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
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by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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