A meandering, cerebral work about a man clawing his way out of darkness.
A combat photographer seeks respite from his grief in Harkins’ novel of the Vietnam War, a sequel to The Big Buddha Bicycle Race (2018).
In 1972, U.S. Air Force cameraman Brendan Leary is in a military hospital in Thailand, recovering from injuries sustained in a deadly attack. Among the dead is Tukada, a Thai woman whom Leary loved. After he’s discharged, he’s depressed and haunted by strange visions: “It’s just a bunch of flashes—gunfire, the thumping of chopper blades, Tukada’s death rattle.” He tries to distract himself by teaching English, playing in a garage band, and exploring meditation with the help of a Buddhist monk.It isn’t long before he’s sent back up in the air, however. He experiences another brush with death when his gunship is downed over enemy territory, and he and a friend are the only ones to make it out alive. After a long ordeal involving capture by the North Vietnamese Army, Leary makes it to safety. But as he reaches the end of his rope, Buddhism and perhaps the love of a new woman may be the only things that can save him. Harkins’ prose is muscular and immersive, detailing Leary’s war experience with surprising imagery: “The engine exploded again and, like the tongue of a hungry dog, flames began lapping at the gash in the wing…suddenly we skidded sideways like an airborne hockey puck.” The novel marks an atypical entry in the annals of Vietnam War literature, as Leary isn’t a soldier, per se and isn’t stationed in Vietnam. It’s also a difficult book to enter cold, as it starts right where the previous novel left off, with little explanation, and some 16 different characters are introduced or referenced in the first four pages. Like many characters on spiritual quests, Leary can come off as a bit annoying at times, quoting Khalil Gibran and going on for way too long about his band. Overall, the narrative is slim and slow, and as a result, its readership may be narrowed to those who underwent similar disillusionment during the Vietnam era.
A meandering, cerebral work about a man clawing his way out of darkness.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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