A smoldering story of entrapment and escape.
A skater-turned-photographer descends into the Phoenix party scene in Duffy’s literary novel.
Riley never meant to be a photographer; he was a professional skateboarder until a bad landing put him in a coma. When he woke up, his job on the tour was gone, and now he feels dizzy whenever he tries to get back on a board. Eventually, he settles for becoming a Phoenix-based skate photographer instead. From shooting skaters, he moves to parties, where he becomes the unofficial candid nightlife photographer of a beautiful model called Ashli Rose. After that, his career takes off. “Riley, the photo guy,” he narrates. “Ashli’s photo guy. My name loosely strung to hers a passport to every party, a seat at every table, a bottle or a can or a rolled up twenty passed my way. Head nods and hugs and so many smiles when I entered a room whether I was pointing my lens or not.” It’s a scene in which nobody is interested in feeling their emotions, which is just fine for Riley, who blunders from one bed or bender to the next without much thought as to why he is doing it. By the time the party lifestyle starts to catch up with his new friends—who begin dropping dead with alarming frequency—it may be too late for Riley to find his way back to normal life. Duffy has a talent for sketching the brilliant desert landscape of Phoenix and its surroundings, both geographically and psychologically. “Light for light’s sake,” the Chicago-born Riley says of Christmas-bulb-strung palm trunks. “To illuminate our path to the next booth or barstool. Meaningless here where years didn’t end, but simply reset. Where time folded in on itself, and as the calendar turned, we celebrated with debaucherous parties.” The novel’s characters and their plots never quite achieve the level of pathos that the book’s language and themes are so clearly calibrated to evoke, but fans of a certain tradition of masculine literary fiction will find in Riley a kindred damaged spirit.
A smoldering story of entrapment and escape.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798218456955
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Picket Fire
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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