A somber book about the formative, irreplicable experiences shared between friends and the agony and bewilderment of loss.
Writer and mother Mila, one of a trio of middle-school classmates who became close friends, reflects on their once-interwoven lives after a member of the trio dies unexpectedly.
As the book opens, Mila hears her cell phone buzz. It’s Citlali’s aunt, writing to tell Mila that Citlali has drowned in the sea in Senegal and her ashes will be brought back to Mexico. Dalia, too, has been informed. Mila, Dalia, and Citlali first met as preteens in Mexico City and stayed friends even as their personal and professional paths diverged: Dalia moved to Spain; Citlali settled in Brazil but moved around while working for an environmental NGO; Mila remained in Mexico. Stricken with shock and grief at the news, Mila agrees to help organize a sort of memorial service—she calls it a “leave-taking ceremony”—for Citlali. More information about the trio is revealed as Mila contemplates their individual and communal bonds, tracing the history of their friendship from its inception in junior high to the present. Two defining events soon emerge: an adult literacy campaign for which Mila, Dalia, and Citlali volunteered around the beginning of high school, and a trip to Europe to visit Citlali about six months after Mila and Dalia started college. Hindered by a low score on the entrance exam for her chosen academic track, Citlali had instead elected to take a job picking grapes in France, one in a series of offbeat decisions. Her private struggles are seen through Mila's eyes, referenced but never belabored; this limited context for her death feels true to life rather than unsatisfying. Translated from the Spanish by MacSweeney, the novel evokes the awkward process of growing up, chronicling adolescence and the transition into adulthood vividly and frankly. While their personalities and interests vary—differences that cause more than a few tiffs—the women share the love for embroidery implied by the title. Passages about embroidery and other forms of stitching divide sections of the novel, though any symbolic link to the events of the plot is not obvious.
A somber book about the formative, irreplicable experiences shared between friends and the agony and bewilderment of loss.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781949641530
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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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