A moving and polished novel that highlights Rao’s literary promise.
An Indian immigrant moves to Atlanta for an arranged marriage and undertakes a quest for identity in this debut novel.
When 8-year-old Tara’s father and pregnant mother immigrate to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates from Mangalore, India, to build a better life, she’s left behind with members of her extended family. Feeling abandoned, she takes refuge in reading, and her bookish nature leads her to obtain a master’s degree in English literature and employment as a journalist at the Morning Herald. Although she harbors dreams of becoming a fiction writer, her family is more interested in seeing her married off to a proper Hindu groom. As a result, Sanjay enters Tara’s life as an arranged husband. At 31, she uproots her life in India to join him in the American South. Rao’s prose brims with authentic scenes of Atlanta, set at the Decatur Farmers Market, Lindbergh, and cafes in Buckhead, navigating the Perimeter; autumn trees in the South are engagingly described as “eerie contortions of bare arms that stretched out toward a bitter sky.” Eventually, Tara learns that Sanjay passionately loves another woman, making her irrelevant. She and her husband continue to cohabitate until her independence threatens the insecure, jealous Sanjay. Rao unflinchingly and realistically portrays a cycle of domestic abuse that ends with Tara fighting for—and gaining—her freedom. Throughout the novel, childhood flashbacks introduce Tara’s past, including memories of an adolescent crush, Cyrus; they later rekindle their dormant romance. Empowered by her newfound sense of belonging, she effectively asserts her voice by writing an op-ed published for the Morning Herald. When controversy ensues, she stands tall, buoyed by her hard-won sense of self.
A moving and polished novel that highlights Rao’s literary promise.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-761-6
Page Count: 312
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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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