An assured first novel explores the bonds and divides among three orphaned sisters.
Sisterhood is the power that gets three young Muslim American girls through a neglected childhood in this debut novel.
Their mother died years ago; when their beloved father is murdered, young sisters Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar are orphaned. Their parents were immigrants from Pakistan, so they are “familyless in America” except for one uncle, their mother’s brother, whom they don’t know. Noreen, the oldest sister, is smart, pretty, and responsible; Aisha is assertive and angry. Kausar, the book’s narrator, is the youngest. She’s frightened and confused, but she worships her sisters fiercely. The girls are taken in by the man Kausar calls Uncle, the term always followed by a black bar, as if his name were redacted in an official document. He picks them up in Philadelphia and takes them to a city a “five-hour car ride” away. He promises them a new home with plenty of room and a zoo; what they get is a cramped apartment with a hallway full of caged birds and three bedrooms, to one of which all of them are confined. Uncle gives them strict rules of behavior and isolates them from everything but school. He’s dealing with his own problems—he’s separated from his American wife (who wants nothing to do with his nieces) and two sons, whom he maintains in suburban splendor. He lives in his own apartment near the girls, where his hoarding is out of control. So he often neglects his nieces, leaving them without food or money. He rents out the other bedrooms in their apartment to immigrants in transit, and sometimes the sisters get lucky, as with a kindly couple who parent them for a while. But much of the time they are on their own. Caught between American culture and their family's Pakistani background with little guidance, the girls turn to each other for support. But as they grow up and become teenagers, cracks develop in their bonds of love. Kausar’s compelling voice, sometimes lyrical, sometimes heartbreaking, is skillfully crafted, changing subtly as she grows. The book’s ending, a jump forward in time, seems tacked on and less convincing than what went before, but the sisters’ story is a moving journey.
An assured first novel explores the bonds and divides among three orphaned sisters.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-13346-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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
Still more brilliant escapism among Kwan’s 1 percenters. Too much is never enough.
Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Or, maybe let’s.
In his second follow-up to the blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, Kwan continues to wrap fairy-tale love stories in glitz, glamour, couture, fine art, and delicious wit. (It’s possible that the author is on a diet because the food component seems slightly less dominant than usual.) This time, our star-crossed lovers are Rufus Gresham, Viscount St. Ives, a man whose beauty has been driving women to distraction since he was photographed in his boxers ironing a dress shirt at age 16, and Eden Tong, a young doctor who lives with her widowed father on the family property at Greshamsbury Hall. Though Rufus has been madly in love and planning to marry Eden since childhood, he is about to run into a solid wall of opposition from his mother, Lady Arabella. Since she and Lord Gresham have managed to drain the family coffers, she is determined to save the family by having each of her three children marry serious money. But right from the start, when an active volcano interrupts the wedding of daughter Augusta to Scandinavian royalty, things don’t go her way. Often hilarious epigraphs and fourth-wall-breaking footnotes include this: “Founded in 1875 in Venice, Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua was also the official supplier of precious fabrics to the Vatican until Pope Paul VI decided to tighten the belt on luxury goods. (This would explain the pillows from Target I saw in the waiting room during my last audience with the Pope.)” One also enjoys the gossip articles, invitations, and menus sprinkled through the text, and the little icons used to signal location changes—Hawaii hibiscus, London Big Ben, Greshamsbury tea set, Houston oil derrick, etc.—are adorable.
Still more brilliant escapism among Kwan’s 1 percenters. Too much is never enough.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9780385546294
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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