An ambitious, disjointed take on exploring world history and one’s own background.
An adopted man takes a journey of self-discovery in Vlach’s novel.
From a young age, Michael has known that he was adopted. His biological father was Greek, though the family who raises him is not. Michael attends elementary school in the 1950s in the small town of West Pittsburg, California. Life is normal enough until his adoptive father, Jack, dies when Michael is a teenager. Michael, his brother Verne, and their adoptive mother, Virginia, move to a smaller home in Sacramento. As Virginia develops mental health issues, he moves to San Francisco, marries, and starts a family of his own. He then becomes quite curious about his biological lineage; who was this Greek father? As Michael puts it, when passing a Greek restaurant or festival, “anxiety would flow through me like CIA electricity flowed through my mom’s brain.” Interspersed between chapters about Michael’s life and his search for his heritage are flashbacks to various times in history, such as Arcadia in 1605 CE and Sparta in 241 BCE. These sections involve short, often playful scenes, such as one set in ancient Athens in which Sophists criticize Socrates’ philosophy as he walks among his “groupies.” Initially, the shifts back and forth between time periods are jarring; while the past events can be fantastical, Michael’s actions, like taking a DNA test, are not always action-packed. There really is no telling what will come next; often, what does come next is appealingly odd—take, for instance, an appearance by the Roman emperor Nero, who complains about how his wife nagged him for coming home late after singing his “glorious poetry at the Coliseum Slam.” (Nero is also not at all displeased with being called, to his face, “the Great Whore of Babylon.”) Funny, kooky anachronisms and characters run freely in this story that never ceases to offer surprises.
An ambitious, disjointed take on exploring world history and one’s own background.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9798218599164
Page Count: 659
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
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
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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