This well-told tale with rich prose and relatable characters is a good primer on Ukraine.
Two Ukrainians struggle against the backdrop of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Even after the USSR craters, Ivan fears that spies lurk behind him. “Don’t look for shadows behind your back,” a friend likes to say. Ivan and Phoebe fall briefly in love, if that’s what you can call it, and marry. Ivan is reluctant about the match to start with, but he gives in to family and social pressures. It’s a mistake from the get-go. Phoebe’s real name is Maria, but her chosen name alludes to Phoebus, the Greek god of poetry. Before the marriage, she’d lent Ivan a floppy disk with all her poems, which he neither cares about nor ever returns. Perhaps he sees in her poetry the key to Phoebe’s developing into her own person, which would endanger his dreams. He will provide for them—he has a plan. Phoebe becomes pregnant with Emilia, whom they both love, but Ivan refuses to allow her to do anything but stay home with in-laws who can’t stand her. She gets clear second billing both in this novel and in life—Ivan dreams of a better future for himself but prohibits Phoebe from pursuing her love of poetry. In the story’s most telling line, “he shared his parenthood with Phoebe—Phoebe about whom he could not imagine talking to anyone at all.” So while she's stuck at home, Ivan goes out into the local world trying to find a decent job. Meanwhile, Ivan laments his lack of control over life after communism. He and Phoebe played bit parts in the political upheaval and struggle for democracy but remain far removed from influence over Ukraine’s future. Yes, they’d once been part of history, two people among thousands protesting in the Maidan, Lviv’s main square. Ivan feels that but for the protests by him and his comrades in arms, the Soviet Union would still be “alive and well.” But now what? Both husband and wife are trapped in a societal collapse and its painful rebirth, and they don’t even have each other for solace.
This well-told tale with rich prose and relatable characters is a good primer on Ukraine.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781646052622
Page Count: 425
Publisher: Deep Vellum
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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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