While its pacing is uneven, Nesser’s novel gains in power as it raises difficult questions about memory and morality.
Nesser’s novel follows its young narrator through a series of traumatic events over the course of one summer.
When a book begins with the line “I’m going to tell you about a tragic and terrible event that marked my life,” it sets up some high expectations. Nesser balances a good sense of place with a feeling of impending doom, turning nostalgia on its head. Teenage narrator Erik, his friend Edmund, and Erik’s 22-year-old brother, Henry—who’s working on an “unexpected and eerie” novel—spend their summer near an idyllic lake in rural Sweden. The year is 1962, and Erik and Henry’s mother is slowly dying of cancer back in their hometown. Before their departure, in the waning days of the school year, they encountered new substitute teacher Ewa, who looks like the actress Kim Novak and is engaged to Berra, a prominent athlete with a violent streak. Not long after the boys arrive for their summer vacation by the lake, they discover that Henry and Ewa are having an affair. Erik’s warning of terrible things to come and the presence in the narrative of numerous Agatha Christie novels all act as blatant foreshadowing. When Berra turns up dead, that event dramatically shifts the mood of the book. There are a few idioms which, in Vogel’s translation, feel decidedly American in this very Swedish novel, including the phrase "It is what it is," which Erik ponders. As Nesser burrows further into this fictional world, though, as when Erik declares himself part of a clique known as “the anti-soccer crowd,” the novel’s idiosyncrasies become more charming.
While its pacing is uneven, Nesser’s novel gains in power as it raises difficult questions about memory and morality.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64286-019-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: World Editions
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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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