A beguiling tale, fluently told and closely observed, that conceals as much as it reveals.
Family secrets surface and are hidden away again in Mengestu’s atmospheric story.
Mamush, Mengestu’s protagonist, is a world-traveling journalist who has made a name for himself reporting on the worst of humanity: war, genocide, and “long-simmering border conflicts and the refugee crises that grew out of them.” Home and a wife and child in Paris call to him. But so does his family in the Washington suburbs, including a man, newly deceased, who is Mamush’s father—or is he? The first sign that something isn’t quite right in Mamush’s world is that he reroutes the subsequent emergency trip across the Atlantic to Chicago, where he once concocted an alter ego, a hidden life that fulfills a wise comment by a college friend: “You’re like a donut. There’s a hole in the middle, where something solid should be.” But Samuel, his father, harbored a secret life, too, that Mamush is determined to ferret out, including time spent behind bars. As Mengestu’s story unfolds, Mamush emerges as a young man not entirely at home in his own skin, even as Samuel takes shape as a well-meaning dreamer with a headful of business schemes and a taxicab full of neglected traffic citations, occasioning more than one interaction with racist cops. Samuel is a man of strong opinions as well, convinced that everyone is out to get him, especially Ethiopians who choose to speak English rather than Amharic. In Mengestu’s skillful hands Mamush is anything but a reliable narrator, but Samuel’s homespun wisdom, born of struggles that we can only guess at, is the real takeaway, his voice from beyond the grave insisting, “Go home to your family, Mamush. Right now. As fast as you can, and once there, do everything you can not to leave.”
A beguiling tale, fluently told and closely observed, that conceals as much as it reveals.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780385350006
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
A sweet bedtime story.
A boy and his stuffed bear head into the woods.
Having captured readers’ attention with Born a Crime (2016), his bestselling memoir of growing up in South Africa, comedian and television host Noah has written a parable about decision-making. As he puts it in a brief prologue, “It’s about disagreements and difference—but it’s also about how we bridge those gaps and find what matters most, whether we’re parents or kids, neighbors, gnomes, or political adversaries. It’s a picture book, but it’s not a children’s book. Rather, it is a book for kids to share with parents and for parents to share with kids.” With plentiful illustrations by Hahn and in language aimed at young listeners, it tells the story of a small boy so impatient to start his Saturday adventures that he rebels against the rules of his household and heads out without brushing his teeth or making his bed, despite the reminders of his stuffed bear, Walter. “We can’t just run away,” protests the bear. “Your mother will miss you. And where will we sleep? And who will make us waffles?” “We’ll build our own house,” the boy responds. “And we’ll grow our own waffles!” From there, the pair go on their walkabout, encountering a garden gnome, a pair of snails, and a gang of animated coins who have lessons to offer about making choices. Though the author suggests in the introduction that adult readers might enjoy the book on their own, those looking for a follow-up to the memoir or a foray into adult fiction should be warned that this is not that book.
A sweet bedtime story.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593729960
Page Count: 128
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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