There's little new in this familiar coming-of-age tale, but it's extremely readable and has an appealing protagonist.
Journalist-turned-novelist Steavenson follows a young woman’s quest for fulfillment from a privileged, unhappy childhood through graduation from Radcliffe in 1968.
The author skillfully sets the scene with 8-year-old Margot Thornsen’s fall from a treehouse. Her self-absorbed mother’s reaction to the diagnosis of a concussion? “Don’t whine,” she tells her weeping daughter as the wound is stitched shut. Once-bold, adventurous Margot is transformed overnight into a cautious, fearful child, though this seems an inevitable reaction to Mother’s constant criticism. Margot’s growth spurt to 6 feet is viewed by Peggy Vanderloep Thornsen as one more impediment to her finding a suitable husband, along with the girl’s mystifying interest in science and regrettable tendency to do well in school. Steavenson depicts her characters with very broad strokes, and the 1950s and ’60s landscape is decidedly generic, but her portrait of the post–WWII American upper class, on the brink of change but still implacably bound to old ways, is unquestionably compelling. Margot’s fascination with biochemistry, which blossoms at Radcliffe into a determination to pursue a career as a scientist, is as credible and engaging as her ongoing infatuation with Trip Merryweather, the boy from the mansion next door. Forever keeping Margot on a string while he pursues prettier girls, Trip is one of the many strongly delineated secondary characters. They include Trip’s much more sympathetic older brother, Richie, a medical student; Margot’s free-spirited friend Maddy, whom Richie helps get a safe though illegal abortion; and Sandy Full, who casts a sardonic eye on the cluelessness of the privileged from his vantage point as the son of someone who “married the help.” The extent to which Margot is enclosed by this world can be judged by her thought when Sandy says he’s from Philly. “Frilly? Was that somewhere in Connecticut?” Her liberation from this stifling cocoon is only partially complete, as the novel ends with her departure for London, leaving behind a whole lot of unfinished business that blatantly signals there will be a sequel.
There's little new in this familiar coming-of-age tale, but it's extremely readable and has an appealing protagonist.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-324-02084-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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