A well-balanced comic tale that deftly grapples with larger contemporary themes.
In this debut novel, a pair of brothers weathers the changing fortunes of a failing New England town.
Pennacook, Massachusetts, has seen better days: “What they’d soon call the Great Recession had just unmasked itself to the world, but it seemed to have gotten a head start here.” The depressed mill town’s affordability is why Ray Markham chose to settle there five years ago, after his parents were killed in a car accident and the recent high school graduate became the legal guardian of his younger brother, Patrick. Since then, Ray has worked at the deli counter of the local chain grocery store, Bounty Bag, while Patrick has made his way through the town’s not-so-good public school system. Bounty Bag happens to be the largest employer and the primary landowner in Pennacook. (The chain may also be partially responsible for the town’s substantial population of wild boars.) Dr. Regina Chong, principal of Patrick’s high school, is supporting a referendum to override the local tax cap to fund a desperately needed new school building, but for her plan to work, she needs to spur voter turnout among the generally disengaged electorate. Her scheme is thrown into jeopardy when a management shake-up at Bounty Bag—and the resulting push for automation—inspires the workers to rise up in protest. Meanwhile, 16-year-old Patrick has been getting into trouble, showing up to track practice drunk, dyeing his hair electric blue, and “running away” to stay in a friend’s basement. While Ray navigates the changing landscape of Bounty Bag with his colorful co-workers—odd characters like Muscles Carbonara, Toothless Mary, and The Alfredo—Patrick learns a bit of American history from his terminally ill teacher Mr. Grant, who helps him put the instabilities of capitalism and democracy in perspective. Can the Markhams manage to stay afloat, even if Pennacook itself is going down?
Giroux’s prose is reminiscent of Richard Russo’s writing: intricate and incisive, though always full of warmth and humor. Giroux particularly shines when chronicling the rules and rule breakers of Bounty Bag: “Every law and the Bounty Bag Code were against Toothless Mary’s smoking in Deli, but before the store opened she did it anyway and left her hair unwrapped too. During business hours, she smoked on the Golden Mile, the long, wide lane out back used for trash and Deliveries. Sometimes she returned from the Golden Mile with little pieces of garbage attached to her.” The author ambitiously sets out to say something about the state of the contemporary American town, subject to the whims of corporations, distracted voters, and shortsighted politicians. He manages to achieve that goal without drifting too far into didacticism or oversimplification. The characters are believable even as they are peculiar, and readers will have no trouble sympathizing with their various attempts to stay employed—or simply to remain sane. Patrick is a particularly well-drawn figure. Readers will not regret their time spent in Pennacook and will likely keep an eye out for whatever lighthearted dramas Giroux puts his pen to in the future.
A well-balanced comic tale that deftly grapples with larger contemporary themes.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73422-400-9
Page Count: 290
Publisher: New Salem Books
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”
A stranger comes to town, and a beloved storyteller plays this creative-writing standby for all it’s worth.
Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online creative writing class is to create a two-person character study, and Hilderbrand has her write up the two who arrive on the ferry in an opening scene of the book, using the same descriptors Hilderbrand has. Amusingly, the class is totally unimpressed. “‘I found it predictable,’ Willow said. ‘Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt “Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.”’” Blond Sharon abandons these characters, but Hilderbrand thankfully does not. They are Kacy Kapenash, daughter of retiring police chief Ed Kapenash (the other swan song referred to by the title), and her new friend Coco Coyle, who has given up her bartending job in the Virgin Islands to become a “personal concierge” for the other strangers-who-have-come-to-town. These are the Richardsons, Bull and Leslee, a wild and wealthy couple who have purchased a $22 million beachfront property and plan to take Nantucket by storm. As the book opens, their house has burned down during an end-of-summer party on their yacht, and Coco is missing, feared both responsible for the fire and dead. Though it’s the last weekend of his tenure, Chief Ed refuses to let the incoming chief, Zara Washington, take this one over. The investigation goes forward in parallel with a review of the summer’s intrigues, love affairs, and festivities. Whatever else you can say about Leslee Richardson, she knows how to throw a party, and Hilderbrand is just the writer to design her invitations, menus, themes, playlists, and outfits. And that hot tub!
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780316258876
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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
© 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.
bookshelf
