A sprawling collage that, though lengthy and chatty, offers memorable characters.
Schulze offers an epic, character-driven novel of love, Hollywood, and ambition that spans two decades.
In 2016, 21-year-old Jacob Andrezj is a cinema buff with a chest full of DVDs and the passion to talk about them. He studies screenwriting in Boston and has just returned stateside from study abroad in Florence, Italy, where he explored his sexuality. However, he finds the gay scene in New England, particularly during Pride Month, lacking—until he meets an older man named Stewie Hanz, who turns Jacob on to the music of the Pet Shop Boys and listens to his intense criticism of films such as Lawrence of Arabia. Meanwhile, out in California, Drew Lawrence is a 40-year-old filmmaker who, thanks to his frustrations and abuse of steroids and other drugs, is prone to destructive outbursts. When he’s not snorting cocaine, having sex with male go-go dancers, or cruising around in his Jeep (with a license plate that reads “JEEPGUY”), he’s wondering where his “magic” went, so he embarks on a quest to regain his artistry. A man known as Whale is a young intern for a famous movie producer who calls himself “the Professor,” who, despite his moniker, is hardly instructive. Whale, along with his fellow interns, is often humiliated whenever he interacts with his boss; for example, the Professor gave him his insulting nickname. To aggravate matters, Whale lives with a wealthy slacker named Alex Avery who gets his kicks from drugs and rewatching The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). It’s clear that the entertainment business isn’t what Whale bargained for.
Some portions of Schulze’s novel are written as a screenplay, others are not, but the main narratives effectively interweave as the story goes on. The work is more than 800 pages long, and with that length come a range of styles and tapestry of tones, with physical connections that range from a relatively chaste kiss of two strangers to a drug-fueled Drew working his “coarse leathery hands” over a conquest in a bathroom. The page count also allows for intriguingly nuanced characters, and as the characters’ stories grow more complex, readers will find themselves consistently curious as to how the next scene will develop. Will Drew run himself ragged or find a path of reform? Will Jacob and Stewie make things work even when the latter reveals a secret? Schulze effectively paints Jacob as someone who desperately wants to join “the industry” even though his boss physically beats him. Many strange denizens of LA make their ways across the stage, as well. The many-layered narrative heavily focuses on dialogue, which makes for a slow pace. Jacob makes numerous digressions that add little to the story, explaining everything from Hogwarts to a T-shirt from Glee to how he picks what music to play in the car with his friends. (Even Stewie complains: “You say so many things!”) As a result, readers will find that speed is always a priority. A sprawling collage that, though lengthy and chatty, offers memorable characters.Pub Date: June 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781737037859
Page Count: 822
Publisher: David Schulze Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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