A novel that begins quietly becomes an exhilarating and riveting must-read and then read-again.
A New York City psychiatrist treats a patient with troubling blackouts and hallucinations, raising a host of tantalizing questions about the nature of psychology, memory, and linear time.
As the title implies, the book is presented largely as a case study, with Dr. Henry Byrd writing about his patient Jane O., a 38-year-old single mother, with measured detachment. Days after their abbreviated first session in the spring of 2018—Jane walked out after only 14 minutes, saying “I think this was a mistake”—she turns up in an emergency room with no memory of the previous 25 hours; she names Dr. Byrd as her doctor. While the hospital soon releases Jane, Dr. Byrd becomes increasingly fascinated by her unusual case. Jane has hyperthymesia—an excessive, accurate memory for dates, places, and events—but has also recently experienced a frightening hallucination: She saw and even talked with a man she knows died when they were both teenagers. As her therapy with Dr. Byrd progresses, she suffers increasingly worrisome blackouts and hallucinations. While the police suspect she’s a fake, Dr. Byrd’s attempts at diagnosis lead him to fascinating, bizarre-sounding theories. Meanwhile, at Dr. Byrd’s urging, Jane begins writing a journal in the form of letters to her son that she hopes will explain her situation to him in the future. Revealing details she has yet to share with Dr. Byrd, the letters show that she’s a caring mother and a self-aware, if lonely, person—not unlike Dr. Byrd, an equally caring single father facing personal and professional difficulties that medical ethics prevent him from discussing with Jane. The relationships among scientific fact, emotion, and psychology are tangled here. No viewpoint is reliable, but no one is wrong. Just when the truth seems sad but clear, Walker throws in a twist (or two) to turn the narrative on its head in satisfyingly disturbing ways, especially given that Walker’s last novel, The Dreamers (2019)—about an imaginary epidemic—seemed like pure fiction when it was published in pre-Covid times.
A novel that begins quietly becomes an exhilarating and riveting must-read and then read-again.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781984853943
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
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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