A fresh, affecting take on a tale as old as time.
A married woman mourns the loss of her lover.
Crossan, Ireland’s fifth children's laureate, explores the unexpected end of an extramarital affair in her first adult novel. Estate lawyer Ana deals with death daily but still finds herself wholly unprepared when she learns Connor—her client and lover of three years—has died suddenly: “We plan for death, / make sensible decisions while gorging on life. / But no one intends to die.” Ana learns of Connor’s passing from his widow, Rebecca, who knows nothing about their relationship. Written in verse, the novel weaves past and present together as Ana tries not to succumb to grief while looking back over the good (and bad) of their relationship. Married with two children herself, Ana finds herself ensconced in a unique kind of grief; she must mourn in private because their relationship was a secret and mourning properly could cost her everything. While coping with Connor’s death, Ana becomes increasingly erratic: She ignores her family, falls behind at work, and tries to befriend Rebecca. As the two women become closer, Ana begins to reevaluate what Connor has told her about his wife and his life. It's only after he’s gone that she begins to see him and their relationship for what it truly was. Crossan’s writing helps underscore the novel’s themes of memory, time, and the manifestation of grief. The fragmented style mirrors Ana’s scattered thoughts and memories, and the white space on the page feels like a physical embodiment of their affair—which took place in the found stretches of their lives. At one point, Ana thinks: “We were never forever. / Always in a place of / passing. / Everything that mattered happened in locked rooms. / Nothing came out of them.” As she exits that locked room for good, Ana must step fully into her messy life—whatever the outcome.
A fresh, affecting take on a tale as old as time.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-42858-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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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