by Michele Mari ; translated by Brian Robert Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2024
A gripping, beguiling, occasionally discomfiting, and utterly fascinating tour de force.
A curious teenager's conversations with an odd groundskeeper yield far more than he'd bargained for.
In 1969 in rural Italy, 13-year-old Michelino whiles away the early August days by peppering Felice, the groundskeeper of his grandfather's estate, with questions about the place and pestering him to stop killing the red slugs that populate the property. Plagued by the premature onset of hereditary memory loss, Felice agrees to pause his molluscan massacre in exchange for Michelino's help in developing mnemonic devices to remember basic facts of everyday life: fleece flower by the bedside to remember his name, black arrows directing him to the outhouse. But as Michelino's "maieutic maneuvers" grow ever more convoluted (a hammer and sickle somehow come to signify a rotten sausage?), the narrative takes a disturbing tilt. Felice reveals his knowledge of a secret room above a hayloft, and buried truths emerge involving Nazi officers, the manor's mysterious previous owners, and Felice's own enigmatic identity. Mari's signature approach to memory and childhood serves the storytelling well, and idiosyncratic elements intensify the novel's underlying tension: Felice's strangely endearing speech habits (“Firs’, we have t’ be fin’in’ ou’ me age"), Michelino's eclectic philosophical references (Lukács, Adorno, and Aristotle among them), and actual historical events described with painstaking specificity, such as a reference to an infamous football match that turned violent and the "swollen eye of Néstor Combin," a professional footballer. Kudos to translator Moore, whose consummate conversion allows readers to luxuriate in the language of even deceptively minor moments: "amid the heads of lettuce, languished the halved cadavers of red slugs."
A gripping, beguiling, occasionally discomfiting, and utterly fascinating tour de force.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781913505905
Page Count: 240
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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by Michele Mari ; translated by Brian Robert Moore
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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New York Times Bestseller
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 Nora Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 2024
A touching story of love and grief ends in an epic battle of good versus evil.
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New York Times Bestseller
Roberts’ latest may move you to tears, or joy, or dread, or all three.
Every summer, John and Cora Fox visit Cora’s mother, Lucy Lannigan, in Redbud Hollow, Kentucky, leaving their children, 12-year-old Thea and 10-year-old Rem, for a two-week taste of heaven. The children love Grammie Lucy far more than John’s snooty family, which looks down on Cora. Lucy, a healer with deep Appalachian roots, loves animals, cooks the best meals, plays musical instruments, and makes soap and candles for her thriving business. Thea—who’s inherited the psychic abilities passed down through the women of Lucy’s family—has vivid magical dreams, one of which becomes a living nightmare when a psychopath robs and murders John and Cora as Thea watches helplessly. Thea’s description of the killer and her ability to see him in real time help the skeptical police catch Ray Riggs, who goes to prison for life. Although Thea and Rem go on to have a wonderful childhood with Grammie, Thea constantly wages a mental battle with Riggs, who tries to use his own psychic abilities to get into her mind. Over the years, Thea uses her imagination to become a game designer while the more business-minded Rem helps manage her career. Thea eventually builds a house near Lucy, where a newly arrived neighbor is her teen crush, singer-songwriter Tyler Brennan. Tyler has his own issues and is protective of his young son but slowly builds a loving relationship with Thea, whose silence about her abilities leads to a devastating misunderstanding. At first Thea tries to keep Riggs locked out of her mind. As her powers grow, she torments him. Finally, she realizes that she must win this battle and destroy him if she’s ever to have peace.
A touching story of love and grief ends in an epic battle of good versus evil.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781250289698
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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