by Patrick deWitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 4, 2023
A quietly effective and moving character study.
An old man’s routines are interrupted by a woman in pink in this wistful fable.
Bob Comet, a retired librarian, is 71 and has lived an unremarkable life in Portland, Oregon, in a mint-colored house that belonged to his late mother. “He had no friends, per se; his phone did not ring, and he had no family.” The year is 2005, and this dreary state of affairs stems partly from the fact that shortly after he married her in 1959, Bob’s wife ran off with his best friend. Things begin to change for the retiree when he encounters a woman about his age in a pink sweatsuit staring at the refrigerated beverages in a 7-Eleven. After he learns that she is a resident of a nearby senior center and returns her there, he makes a startling discovery. The narrative shifts to Bob in his 20s, when he becomes a librarian and meets his wife-to-be and the man who would become his best friend, before the two betrayed him. The story shifts again, to Bob at age 11, when he ran away from home and had an adventure with two eccentric women who performed elaborate stage shows. They are among the several lesser characters who provide color and light in this gray tale. DeWitt has gained a following with the black comedy of his past three novels—French Exit (2018), Undermajordomo Minor (2015), and The Sisters Brothers (2011). The new book is different, marked by the resigned melancholy surrounding Bob, a mood not always understated: “There had been whole eras of Bob’s working life where he knew a lamentation at the smallness of his existence.” He brings to mind John Williams’ Stoner and Thoreau’s chestnut about “lives of quiet desperation,” but it is telling that deWitt chooses to capture him at times when his life takes a turn.
A quietly effective and moving character study.Pub Date: July 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780063085121
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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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
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by Liz Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2024
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
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Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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