An appealing fictionalization for readers with a love for the stage.
The creation of the star-studded Broadway musical Camelot takes center stage in Eisenberg’s historical novel.
In 1960, Jane Conroy works for a literary agent in New York but aspires to work behind the scenes on Broadway stage shows. When her uncle Max Conroy manages to get her a job as the girl Friday for Brock Remsen, who works for producer Alan Jay Lerner, she’s whisked into the exciting world of big-time musicals. Lerner and producer Frederick Loewe are working through the creation of a new show, Camelot, based on T.H. White’s 1958 novel The Once and Future King, about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Eisenberg does a masterful job of blending the stories of the fictional Jane and those of the musical’s real-life stars: charming Julie Andrews and lovable rogue Richard Burton. At the heart of the novel is Jane’s commitment to making a career for herself in the world of theater production, which is challenged by her romance with actor Bryce Christmas, a budding musical star. The book alternates between Jane’s first-person and Bryce’s third-person points of view, offering multiple angles on the subject matter. Although the novel offers an engaging and entertaining romp through the tribulations of testing out a new show—from auditions to rehearsals to refining the musical’s book—it’s also an exploration of sexism in the workplace in the early 1960s, as when Eisenberg alludes to the difficulties of reconciling a career in show business with having and raising children (“the minute we say, ‘I do,’ our folks will expect us to start a family”). The author’s research is impeccable. It’s easy to imagine Jane and Bryce as real members of the show’s initial production, and although the novel feels a bit lengthy at more than 325 pages, their chemistry remains compelling throughout.
An appealing fictionalization for readers with a love for the stage.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781639888023
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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