A thoughtful and moving, but artfully unsentimental, depiction of a son’s love.
Buzbee’s novel presents a man’s loving homage to his father, as told in a series of impressionistic remembrances.
Robert Macoby grows up idolizing his father, Elwell, a tough but tender man who lived a remarkably dramatic life. Elwell spent time at an orphanage as a child—his parents struggled to afford the costs of child-raising—and there, he gained the tougher nickname “Mac,” which he earned by fighting off bullies. Mac’s father, a counterfeiter who spent time in prison, abandons the family when Mac is in seventh grade, forcing him to end his education and find work to support his mother and siblings. In 1936, at the age of 15, he joins the U.S. Navy and became a master diver, a remarkable accomplishment of which Robert is very proud. In 1964, when Robert is 7, Mac suffers his first heart attack, a massive one from which he never fully recovers. In 1970, he dies after his last cardiac event; this devastates his teenage son, who’d considered his dad his “best buddy.” Buzbee affectingly relates the heartache in Robert’s narration: “Was it the fatigue of your life, all that roaming, constantly, that ever roaming and uncertain youth of yours, followed then by the discipline and uniform boundaries of the Navy, the brass of that diving helmet, the pressures of the deep you swam through, the constant labor of welding and re-welding? Was it simply too much work for one life?” This fictional remembrance is structured as a scattered assemblage of vignettes, and these episodic portraits of Mac feel tenderly admiring without being hagiographic. The author’s writing style is generally informal, casually anecdotal, and intimately candid, and it has the effect of gently transforming the reader into Robert’s confidant. Buzbee achieves a complex amalgam of celebration and lament; his narrator adores his father and sees his “heroic life” as a model of manhood, but precisely because of this adoration, he experiences his dad’s loss as a catastrophe blow. Overall, it’s an admirably meditative exploration of the depths and travails of a father-son relationships.
A thoughtful and moving, but artfully unsentimental, depiction of a son’s love.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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