A striking, character-driven tale about a disturbed woman and her quirky world.
In this novel, a troubled college student takes a trip down Memory Lane—a past that’s only in her head.
It’s been mere months since Erica Edwards graduated from a South Carolina high school. Now, Erica has decided to adopt the persona of Savannah D’Bergeolet. Savannah is frustrated that her parents and older brother, Roy, can’t remember the family’s history—her father was a perpetually drunk shrimper and a Marine fighter pilot, and they’ve all alienated her twin brother, Chicken John. But none of it is true; she doesn’t even have a twin. Still, Savannah is positive that she’ll reunite with Chicken John in Charleston. She takes an impromptu road trip to the picturesque city with her naïve friend Mitzi Bedenbaugh. At times, Savannah can be offensive; for example, the White woman assumes people of color are uneducated. But she can be dangerous as well. She’s convinced certain people belong to “the Ten,” an evil, racist secret society—not unlike Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline, as Savannah believes she lives inside Southern authors’ fictional stories. In the real world, her distressed family searches for the missing Erica. Roy goes out on his own, a far cry from the online community and games that usually monopolize his time. Savannah also has an unexpected effect on her college writing professor, Creighton Starke. As this one-time author struggles to decide where his life will take him next, he peruses Savannah’s manuscript, Lowcountry Lamentations. These periodic excerpts give Creighton (and readers) insights into the quixotic world Savannah has created and completely immersed herself in.
Malmsteen’s dark comedy has its share of lighthearted moments. Savannah’s amateurish manuscript, for example, is rife with typos and silly turns, like her childhood story of an Orkin man’s sudden obsession with her beautiful mother. Nevertheless, the tale’s more somber elements will hit readers the hardest. Savannah is undeniably unwell, and her misguided confidence that the “characters” in her book—herself, Mitzi, and a passenger they pick up along the way—are relatively safe actually puts them in jeopardy. Roy doesn’t fare much better in his search, and both he and his sister run into trouble with the law. The author excels at character development; the story is told from the narrative perspectives of Savannah, Roy, and Creighton. Savannah remains intriguing throughout the tale. The two men evolve dramatically, and one of them turns into a much more unsavory character by the end. There’s a handful of nods to Southern authors, like Dorothea Benton Frank and Anne Rivers Siddons. At one point, Savannah speaks to Mitzi like Bull Meechum in Conroy’s The Great Santini(“Come on, sportsfans!”). But Malmsteen boasts an indelible prose that’s all his own: “The metal rattled underneath the wheels to the point that even a brave man would have felt his sword hand stutter, and with the windows down as they were, each passing car sounded like the noise one hears the moment before a long-dead grandparent beckons from within the pleasant haze of white light.” Staying true to the novel’s overall tone, the denouement is offbeat and a bit unnerving.
A striking, character-driven tale about a disturbed woman and her quirky world.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 223
Publisher: Broad River Books
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
