Real and raw and exquisitely well crafted.
A knockout of a second novel from the author of Oola (2017).
Ruth is 27 and adrift when we meet her. She has a master’s degree she doesn’t know what to do with. She’s living in the Mission with her ex-boyfriend, Dino, a ketamine dealer who enjoys wearing women’s lingerie. And she’s dancing at a club where she has assumed the name Baby—not because she has any sort of fully fleshed-out stage persona but, rather, because that’s a thing men call her. Narrating her life in a way that feels aimless but not quite random, she tells the story of how she has arrived at this place. She remembers learning about sex from her more worldly friend Mazzy, a young woman “forever marked by being the first student at her private all-girls school to need a real bra.” Ruth reminisces about past lovers and the substances that shaped their relationships. And she describes the men she meets at work, delineating their needs and appetites with an anthropological detachment that is not without empathy. Dino remains, though, the emotional center of her universe, and when he goes missing, she unravels. Newell writes about sex work and drugs and what people—some people—used to call the demimonde without moralizing or reducing her characters to grim allegories. This book is, among other things, funny and sometimes very sweet, and Newell gives shape to Ruth’s chaotic life with gorgeously precise prose. When she sees the ballet-dancer daughter of a wealthy man with whom she’s having an affair, Ruth thinks, “She was the luckiest girl in the whole wide world and she didn’t even care. She wore her hair up in a bun, her neck cool and pale as a halved pear.” There’s so much longing packed into that handful of words! “The hours swooped and gooped around us like fallen ice-cream cones.” Out of context, this does not seem like a great sentence. But within a swirling mess of metaphors recounting doing ketamine with Dino and falling in love, it approaches the sublime.
Real and raw and exquisitely well crafted.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780374613891
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
