Somewhat subtle but undeniably disquieting.
An elderly man in search of his missing granddaughter travels to a bizarre town.
The latest book from Colombian author Rosero to be published in English is a novella, spanning fewer than 100 pages—but it packs in a whole lot of dread and horror. The story opens with 70-year-old Jeremías Andrade being shown his room by a hotel landlady; it’s “a sort of coffin” adorned only by “a single, lopsided painting: the face of Jesus Christ, pale and bloodied, with one eye faded by the damp. Exactly like Christ winking at you.” The landlady warns him to “beware of the nightmares,” and her ominous statement proves prescient. The Andean town seems cursed, blanketed in mist and covered with mouse carcasses. Jeremías encounters a variety of townspeople, mostly unfriendly, including a child kicking what appears to be the severed head of an old woman and a blind woman who says, “Those disgusting mice come from every corner of the globe to die here, this is the town of mice, the only town on Earth where all the world’s mice come to die, the only one. Have you come here to die as well?” Jeremías eventually reveals that he’s come in search of his missing 9-year-old granddaughter, Rosaura; he’s advised to look for her in “the losing place”: “Do not call out to one who cannot hear you. Go and look for her in silence.” Rosero’s prose, as translated by McLean and Meadowcroft, is straightforward and unshowy, which renders the undercurrent of horror all the more effective. His portrait of a town without pity, populated by residents who range from odd to demonic, is excellent, while the dialogue is unexpected and, at times, terrifying. This is an unrelentingly dark book; readers with a taste for the unsettling will find much to admire.
Somewhat subtle but undeniably disquieting.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780811238076
Page Count: 96
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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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