Courageous, insightful, and unsettling poems about war and family ties.
A daughter recalls her relationship with her father, a World War II sailor, in this volume of poetry.
This collection opens with Osterman explaining that a “shellback” is a veteran sailor, particularly one who has taken part in an often brutal initiation ceremony after crossing the equator for the first time. The poems contained here recount events from the Pacific War theater, where the poet’s father served in the Navy, along with moments from her childhood and adulthood, including caring for her aging dad. Closing lines from the title poem summarize Osterman’s emotional quest: “This is one shellback’s daughter / trying to find that wiser self within / who can forgive these men.” She examines the psychological impact of war that reverberates through the lives of those who served. Poems such as “Portrait of My Father as a Dad” recall threats of punishment: “I’ll break every bone in your body if you don’t turn down that TV.” The author charts her pathway to forgiveness: “I let memories I can’t erase / rest in peace” and portrays her father’s struggle with aging and sickness. Osterman’s poetry is captivating in the way that it freshly describes the traditionally masculine endeavor of military combat. The poet includes her father’s spoken memories in italics: “Those shells were the size of a little league bat.” But in poems such as “Think of It,” childbirth is used to depict the destruction of the combat zone: “Ships giving birth— / landing tanks tumbling / from the monster hole, / scuttling to shore.” In doing so, she lends a vulnerability to the apparatus of war, which counters her father’s tough male bravado. But Osterman is also unafraid to face the shocking realities of battle. Describing the corpse of a kamikaze pilot, she notes: “He’s just a torso— / the end like a sponge / filled with blood.” The manner in which the poet captures her aging father’s descent into infirmity can be similarly unflinching yet never without a vein of tenderness: “Without muscle to sniff or swallow, your mouth / and nose let drain what’s left of your life. / I touch your shoulder. Happy Father’s Day, I say.” Set against the brutal backdrop of war, this is an emotionally perceptive, poignant, and thoughtfully nuanced examination of the father-daughter relationship.
Courageous, insightful, and unsettling poems about war and family ties.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73449-653-6
Page Count: 82
Publisher: Paloma Press
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.
An acclaimed novelist revisits the central characters of his best-known work.
At the end of Brooklyn (2009), Eilis Lacey departed Ireland for the second and final time—headed back to New York and the Italian American husband she had secretly married after first traveling there for work. In her hometown of Enniscorthy, she left behind Jim Farrell, a young man she’d fallen in love with during her visit, and the inevitable gossip about her conduct. Tóibín’s 11th novel introduces readers to Eilis 20 years later, in 1976, still married to Tony Fiorello and living in the titular suburbia with their two teenage children. But Eilis’ seemingly placid existence is disturbed when a stranger confronts her, accusing Tony of having an affair with his wife—now pregnant—and threatening to leave the baby on their doorstep. “She’d known men like this in Ireland,” Tóibín writes. “Should one of them discover that their wife had been unfaithful and was pregnant as a result, they would not have the baby in the house.” This shock sends Eilis back to Enniscorthy for a visit—or perhaps a longer stay. (Eilis’ motives are as inscrutable as ever, even to herself.) She finds the never-married Jim managing his late father’s pub; unbeknownst to Eilis (and the town), he’s become involved with her widowed friend Nancy, who struggles to maintain the family chip shop. Eilis herself appears different to her old friends: “Something had happened to her in America,” Nancy concludes. Although the novel begins with a soap-operatic confrontation—and ends with a dramatic denouement, as Eilis’ fate is determined in a plot twist worthy of Edith Wharton—the author is a master of quiet, restrained prose, calmly observing the mores and mindsets of provincial Ireland, not much changed from the 1950s.
A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781476785110
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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