A funny, immersive portrait of an unusual working relationship.
A teenager becomes the scribe of a former fashion icon in this debut literary novel.
Self-conscious 17-year-old Bradley McCreedy responds to an unusual job posting hung in the window of a newsagent’s shop in London: “Wanted!!! Urgent!!! Refined, respectable lady authoress seeks domestic assistant of same ilk. Usual rates.” When he calls the number, the daughter of his potential boss warns him he’ll be working for a dotty older woman, but that’s only the half of it. Eloise Slaughter lives in a stately but filthy mansion, as attentive to her wardrobe and makeup as she is inattentive to the dishes piled up everywhere. She hires Bradley not only to help straighten the place up—something the slightly OCD teen is glad to do—but also to help her with her memoirs. To hear Eloise tell it, she was the high priestess of London fashion in the 1960s and ’70s. Bradley thinks she’s off her rocker, but he takes the job, in part because Eloise doesn’t comment on the massive birthmark on his forehead. She’s certainly a dotty older woman—complete with a locked room he isn’t allowed to go into—but it turns out she isn’t lying about her past. At least not entirely. An unlikely friendship emerges, one that will pay dividends for both parties—at least so long as Bradley doesn’t overreach and bring the whole thing crashing down. Clark is a remarkable ventriloquist, alternating from the working-class vernacular of Bradley to the posh theatricality of Eloise with each chapter. Here, Bradley, who eventually moves into the mansion full time, comments on Eloise’s nocturnal activities: “She prowls at night. I hear her tip-tapping up and down the hallway. Mostly I reckon she gets up to fiddle with her puzzles—loves her jigsaws, Miss E—but sometimes she trots down the corridor in my direction. First time she done that, it got my heart pumping, I can tell you. Lying there, thinking, What if she comes in here and starts acting all weird an’ that?” The characters are richly drawn, and readers will quickly become invested in the odd couple, as individuals and as friends. The story is a pleasure all the way through.
A funny, immersive portrait of an unusual working relationship.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-78-965093-8
Page Count: 291
Publisher: Unbound
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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