A novel unsure of where it wants to go.
A teenage boy upends the lives of his mother and sister after making an impulsive decision.
The latest novel to be translated into English from Mauritian French author Appanah begins with a poem of sorts, credited to “Detainee 16587”: “I’m deep inside a place I don’t want to give a name to,” it begins. “If I speak the real names of the things that are here / Beauty tenderness and imagination fly out of the window.” The reader learns in short order that the detainee in question is Wolf, a 17-year-old boy who has been arrested after taking his mother Phoenix's car and driving without a license to visit his sister, Paloma, a librarian whom he hasn’t seen in years. Wolf ends up crashing the car just before reaching his sister’s commune and is taken to a detention center by police. Later, we learn more about Wolf, who “suffers from anxiety attacks, and can go for days without speaking” and compulsively runs, “to the point of exhaustion, to the point of nausea, until his legs give way, until his thoughts (that are too many, misshapen and contradictory) retreat into the depths of his brain.” The novel goes back into the past, where Appanah tells the story of Phoenix’s traumatic childhood, her father, and the doctor who delivered Wolf. It then returns to the present, where Wolf languishes in the detention center, where he’s living in fear: “He is afraid of having to stay here for long. He is afraid of being forgotten, as he is so silent and invisible. He is afraid that this place will swallow him whole and never spit him out again.” Wolf is a fascinating character, as is Phoenix to a lesser extent, but Appanah doesn’t spend quite enough time with either—the sections on Wolf’s grandfather and doctor don’t go anywhere, or at least any place that opens up the novel. Her writing and Strachan’s translation are fine, although she’s too given to tangents that turn out to be blind alleys. It’s a valiant attempt that just misses its mark.
A novel unsure of where it wants to go.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781644452257
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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