A deeply felt work that shows the magical alchemy of art.
Two parents, a writer and photographer, separately grieve for their daughter in Perly’s sequel novel.
Death Valley(2017) introduced readers to war photographer Vivienne Pink, who went to the Las Vegas desert on an assignment to photograph servicemen with her husband, a novelist named Johnny Coma. (Their original names are Vivienne Pinsky and Jonathon Comasky.) Secret atom bomb tests in the area have left Vivienne with side effects that include a bald scalp. In 2004, the couple’s daughter, Stella, was killed near their Toronto home by a hit-and-run bicyclist; now, in 2016, Vivienne and Johnny are estranged. He’s living in a tiny Barcelona apartment, where he quixotically writes letters to Stella and commits them to the ocean, believing that this will return her to him—which it does, in the form of a talking octopus. Meanwhile, Vivienne has come to Amsterdam, hoping to capture images of a rumored terrorist attack and revisiting her favorite paintings in the city. She also strikes erotic sparks with Alexi Green, a charismatic and mysterious man who seems to know all about her. In their different ways, father and mother reconcile themselves with ghosts of the past. In her third novel, Perly writes in a magical realist vein that is often mediated by vivid images linked to local qualities of light and water in the Netherlands (“Pale silver-green, an Amsterdam sky reflecting its own cold canal water”) and Spain (“The Mediterranean sky was lemon and citron and pink and so humid”).For both Johnny and Vivienne, making and responding to art is revealed to be central to their fully engaging with their daughter’s death: Johnny immerses himself in the work of Miguel de Cervantes; Vivienne visits her two favorite paintings in the Rijksmuseum as if they’re old friends. Both characters’ experiences are intriguing, poignant, and passionate—even if they sometimes exist on such a rarefied plane that they seem otherworldly.
A deeply felt work that shows the magical alchemy of art.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-92-808896-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Buckrider Books
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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