A poignant, revealing, and rueful tale of how much the political can affect the personal.
Old-fashioned romance and street-level crime are woven into a coming-of-age saga set amid the political turmoil of early 1990s Nigeria.
The title of Ishola-Ayodeji’s captivating debut novel is something of a double-entendre, as it refers to both the heroine’s first name and her vexing state of being. Patience Adewale is an 18-year-old U.S.–born Nigerian student living in the city of Ibadan with her stern, domineering, and politically influential father, who demands two things of her: that she get her accounting degree from the University of Lagos and that she stop asking him (or anybody else) about the specific whereabouts of her birth mother, Folami, whom he banished to America. Growing up wealthy, sheltered, and insulated from the grimmer realities of Nigerian society, Patience believes her true destiny has been to make and design clothes in the U.S. and is willing to do whatever it takes to locate her mom and fulfill her ambition. She arrives in Lagos convinced that she won’t find what she wants in a classroom and instead makes her way to the seamier side of town to reconnect with Kash, her ne’er-do-well cousin, who engages in petty crimes with his roommate, Emeka. They share their living space with Emeka’s handsome, smarter brother, Chike, an upstanding, hardworking motorcycle taxi driver unable to find work worthy of his university degree in petroleum science. Chike is far more interested in Patience (and the feeling is mutual) than he is in pulling scams with his brother. Yet Emeka and Kash persuade Patience and Chike to help them separate a million Nigerian naira (about $2,400) from a local bank with a phony check. Though Chike’s dead-set against the plan, a wary-but-game Patience overcomes her own jittery reservations and carries out the masquerade required of her for the con, so badly is she wanting to leave home. (“The irony,” she reflects at one point, “needing to do something unlike herself to actually find herself.”) But one big score isn’t enough for Kash and Emeka, and as both Patience and Chike become more exasperated in their efforts to realize their dreams through conventional means, the deeper involved all four become in bigger and riskier illegalities. All this personal struggle takes place within the backdrop of the 1993 presidential election aimed at setting Nigeria on course for a democratic government after years of military rule. Ishola-Ayodeji is deft, shrewd, sometimes witty, and always observant about the social, economic, and political obstacles to Nigerians wishing only to live honorably and decently.
A poignant, revealing, and rueful tale of how much the political can affect the personal.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311691-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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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