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
SEEN & HEARD
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
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