A taut, uncomfortable look at a man forced into a reckoning that’s much more personal than he’d like.
An edgy, discomfiting look at the alpha males of journalism in the age of #MeToo.
Adam Zweig is a successful political writer in Washington, the veteran of a thousand think pieces. He’s in his late 50s, divorced, a man of regular habits. So, when he’s messaged by a young reporter on the trail of a D.C. mediasphere sexual-harassment scandal, the alarm bells tripped aren’t the loud and blaring kind. Mainly, he feels sorrow—the accused is Max Lieberthol, years ago Adam’s editor and mentor at a magazine that resembles the New Republic. Adam, a good progressive, initially hits a morally tutting tone (how could Max have been foolish and vain enough to proposition a staffer?), but there’s sympathy underneath. He’s disappointed, but he wonders: A story like this, about an offense two decades old, committed in a kind of prelapsarian boys-will-be-boys era by an aging lion whose magazine has always had a big reputation, but (after all) a small readership—even in the age of social media, what legs can such a story have? Then—and Kalfus masterfully persuades us that the withholding is not reader-deception but self-deception—Adam begins to recall and recount the context. The accuser, Valerie Iovine, was his closest friend in the office, and Adam was present, outside Max’s office, when the incident occurred; Valerie told Adam about it immediately afterward, and he helped to console her. Adam feels duty-bound to confirm that Valerie is telling the truth, and this—he wants us and himself and most of all Valerie to believe—is an act of characteristic rectitude. The book’s steadily mounting tension derives from what comes next, as circumstance and Valerie herself require him to excavate more thoroughly his relationship with her, a friendship that grew into a professional intimacy and that then (in Adam’s way of seeing it) turned briefly romantic soon before—this having nothing to do with him!—Valerie withdrew from Washington and disappeared into the exile of small-city journalism.
A taut, uncomfortable look at a man forced into a reckoning that’s much more personal than he’d like.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781571315755
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
