A luminous, beautifully told fairy tale grounded in history and elevated by spirit.
A novel presents an emotional story about coming-of-age, spirituality, and the mysteries that lie beyond everyone’s ordinary, waking moments.
At the age of 14, Aiden Glencar’s life is already complicated. He and his older brother, Martin, move between their grandmother, a domineering and occasionally kleptomaniacal Irish Catholic, and their Aunt Clara, who does her best to look after the boys and her own children, taking them to a New Age, nondenominational church. Aiden’s confusion regarding these contradictory philosophies and the strangeness of his living situation is palpable and becomes even more engrossing and sympathetic when he reveals his budding gay sexuality and his fears of what his family and faith might say about it. But it’s Irish folklore more than Christian faith that inscribes the boys’ lives, as Aiden has the second sight, conferring with his dead grandfather and witnessing weirder and more frightening spirits throughout the Boston streets. The boys’ mother has been committed to an asylum, and Aiden fights to get her released even as the spirits urging him to do so give him some doubts about his own sanity. The story continues from this complex setup, teasing out details of Aiden and Martin’s boyhoods in a lovingly rendered 1970s Boston while advancing the murky tale of the spirits Aiden sees, the gift he shares with his mother, and the bitter tragedies and hard-earned triumphs they portend. Mulhern’s (Useless Things, 2018, etc.) prose is strong, delivering readers a sense of the child in Aiden’s voice and a thorough, descriptive view of the world around him. Not only that, but the writing is elevated by a liberal use of quotes and sayings ranging from Bible verses to Thoreau and Yeats, grounding the various players’ cultural context. (At one point, Aiden muses: “Like Thoreau, I believe time is merely a stream we swim in. Someday the current of water will slip away, taking us with it, but the sandy bottom, eternity, will remain.”) Yet ultimately, it’s the rich characters who bring the novel to its greatest heights, as Aiden’s uncertainty, Martin’s protectiveness, their grandmother’s determination, and their mother’s wistfulness and grief make this a story about family and history and give the sense that everything and everyone are connected across time, whether or not those ties are immediately perceived.
A luminous, beautifully told fairy tale grounded in history and elevated by spirit.Pub Date: July 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-0822-4062-1
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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