Kurkov gives us a rich cast of endearing characters and a glimpse of life in an old city on the eastern edge of Europe.
A Ukrainian city finds itself under siege from a series of threats straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie or an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
“You know…some cities only exist so people can dream about going there,” one character tells another in Kurkov’s novel, originally published in Ukraine in 2012. “And sometimes the dreaming is more important than the going.” Now in English, his story paints a dreamlike portrait of Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, and a strange mystery that dares to be solved. Chief among the sleuths are Taras, a young man who drives patients with kidney stones on cobblestone streets to shake them out; Alik, an old hippie who joins his long-haired brethren every September in Lychakiv Cemetery to memorialize Jimi Hendrix (whose right hand is rumored to be buried there); and Captain Ryabtsev, a former KGB officer who once spied on Alik and wants to be his friend. Such eccentric characters are a Kurkov staple, and so is the surreal situation confronting them: Rumors abound that a prehistoric sea may be rising under Lviv, which would explain a spate of violent seagull attacks and a strong smell of iodine that won’t go away. The search for an explanation forms the backdrop to Taras’ tender romance with Darka, a currency exchange clerk who’s allergic to handling money. Captain Ryabtsev goes on a similar search, and Kurkov’s characterization of the captain, who lost his sense of purpose when the Soviet Union collapsed, strikes a sad note in an otherwise lighthearted tale. Though the novel isn’t overtly political, Ryabtsev’s crisis of identity echoes Ukraine’s more than 20 years into its independence. And when Taras gets home after a kidney stone session and hears the national anthem on the radio—“The glory and freedom of our Ukraine has not yet perished”—reading those words now is much more poignant than it was when Kurkov first wrote them.
Kurkov gives us a rich cast of endearing characters and a glimpse of life in an old city on the eastern edge of Europe.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780063354548
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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
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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