An utterly original take on self-perception and perception.
A beguiling, whisper-thin novel about a woman losing her hearing.
At its best, fiction remakes the world, turning what we think we know totally upside down. That’s the case in Rosenfeld’s imaginative debut novel. Louise is totally deaf in one ear, with limited hearing in the other. When her hearing suddenly gets even worse, she needs to decide whether she’s going to get a cochlear implant. At times absurd, but mostly poignant and inventive, the book is really about making sense of the world, exploring the gaps between perception and cognition. To Louise, who has lost her ability to hear middle-low frequencies, language becomes pure sound (“the warmth of timbres”) and touch (“this soft sheen of wind”) and even many senses mixed together (“all sound’s snags and snarls”). Her hearing makes her vulnerable, as she studies people’s lips, tries to snatch words from the world’s din, guesses, and often mishears. In a restaurant, she thinks, “There was a chalkboard on which I was the hangman. ‘F_ _ _ S H _ D?’ the waiter was asking me.” When her hearing keeps worsening, “the monster crouching deep in my ear…gorging on more and more words,” she and her boyfriend communicate in the bathtub, her boyfriend at one end speaking into the water, and she at the other, her good ear resting on the surface of the water, absorbing the vibrations. The book is also a perceptive meditation on identity, with Louise stuck in a kind of “no-man’s-land,” as her doctor puts it, having “built a life as a hearing person” but with the “all the same problems as any deaf person.” The question of who she is becomes more acute as she worries about how an implant might change her: “Would I recognize my mother’s voice…my own voice?” In quietly dazzling prose, Rosenfeld captures what we know but haven’t really seen, what we’ve heard but haven’t quite registered.
An utterly original take on self-perception and perception.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781644452967
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
A moving, realistic look at one woman’s post-divorce family life that manages to be both poignant and funny.
A recently divorced writer juggles a chaotic full house, a struggling career, and a confusing romantic life.
Lila Kennedy thought she had the perfect family—a loving mother, a doting stepfather, two wonderful daughters, and a great husband. She even wrote a self-help book about repairing a marriage, which was published a mere two weeks before her husband left her. After her own mother’s sudden death, Lila finds herself an unexpected single mom with her health-nut stepfather, Bill, for a roommate. When her long-absent actor father, Gene, moves in, things go from crowded to chaotic. When Gene isn’t talking about his memories of starring on a Star Trek–like television show, he’s starting fights with Bill. Perhaps the worst part is that Lila’s supposed to produce a new book about the unexpected direction her life has taken. She quickly finds that writing about her real-life romantic exploits (including the kind gardener Bill hired and the sexy single dad she lusts after at school pick-up) and the actual heartbreak that upended her family is easier said than done. Moyes creates a world that is believable and funny. It’s hilarious to read about the distinct characters in Lila’s life—such as her lentil-loving stepfather and egocentric biological father—interacting with each other. There’s plenty of drama here, but none of it feels forced. It all comes from flawed people doing their best to coexist and making plenty of mistakes along the way. Moyes combines the warmth of an Annabel Monaghan rom-com with the humanity of a Catherine Newman novel, creating a story that will provoke tears and laughter.
A moving, realistic look at one woman’s post-divorce family life that manages to be both poignant and funny.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781984879325
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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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