An unsparing critique of Brazil’s young elites.
Thirty-something Vivian must confront the uncomfortable fact of her enormous privilege.
Vivian lives in an apartment in Rio de Janeiro, bought by her parents for her 30th birthday, which is decorated with designer furniture and prints from a series showing at the local art museum. She’s a freelance curator, one who can afford to take resume-boosting jobs—when money’s tight, she rents out her apartment and moves back into one of her family’s four properties. In her free time, she goes to raves and snorts cocaine with her friends, all of whom are part of Brazil’s cultural elite. Vivian operates in such a rarified realm that she’s been taught she is upper-middle-class—the true upper echelon, in her eyes, have their own private planes. This self-perception is at once deluded and not inaccurate, creating “a sense of inferiority that is very specific, kind of comic and also kinda sad.” One night, as Vivian and friends are in line for a rave, police attack two street vendors, one of whom usually works on Vivian’s street and from whom she often buys beer. Vivian and her friends flee the violence by entering the rave venue; much later, she learns that the vendor, Darlene, has died from a head wound, presumably inflicted by the police that night. Vivian is not a total stranger to dark and unpleasant feelings—she’s been heavily medicated for mental illness since the age of 10—but this violence, so abrupt and so close in proximity, needles her. But can it shock her out of the cocoon of her own privilege? Drummond’s narrative voice is fiercely honest, coolly cynical, and sharply scathing: “What was I supposed to feel: Grief, guilt, indifference, sadness? It was like I’d entered a new environment whose codes I didn’t properly know, and I was supposed to understand, intuitively, how to behave and act in the moment, based on that understanding.” Vivian is not an especially appealing character; and yet, remarkably, Drummond manages to elicit readers’ empathy for her, mining her most fundamental and human flaws and insecurities.
An unsparing critique of Brazil’s young elites.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9780374611286
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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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