by Susan Rieger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 2024
Both snappy and sprawling, this psychologically sharp novel gets the details right on culture and politics, too. A fun read.
A vibrant portrait of a modern family shaped by a significant missing piece.
Rieger starts her latest with the untimely death of her powerhouse central character: Lila Pereira, the recently retired executive editor of a major Washington newspaper. Among those left with regrets is her youngest daughter, Grace, who recently published a novel that was a fictionalized version of Lila's life, including more than one troublesome variation from the official story. Whereas Lila's violently abusive father, Aldo, told his children that their mother, Zelda, died in the mental institution he packed her off to when Lila was 2, in Grace's version, "Zelina" didn't die, but escaped to start another life. Grace has also managed to wound her father, Joe, by giving the fictional mother a long-running affair with a colleague. There's one thing they all agree on, though: The IRL Lila was a washout as a mother, completely and explicitly leaving the parenting to Joe while she pursued her career. She had grown up fine without a mother; why shouldn't they? The story ping-pongs between past and present to develop these themes, with brisk storytelling and sharp dialogue making the pages fly. Rieger manages a very large cast without undue confusion: In addition to three generations of Lila and Joe's family, Grace's best friend, Ruth, is at the center of another group of characters. As in her previous book, The Heirs (2017), DNA testing eventually plays a key role. Fans of Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest, Jenny Jackson's Pineapple Street, and Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise will enjoy the complex interaction of sibling relationships, inherited money, and inherited trauma, and like the authors of those books, Rieger doesn't let the darker parts of her story get in the way of her vivacious storytelling.
Both snappy and sprawling, this psychologically sharp novel gets the details right on culture and politics, too. A fun read.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9780525512493
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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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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SEEN & HEARD
by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2024
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
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Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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