A rather strange but skillfully written study of a group of friends doing their best to get by.
In Cacoyannis’ novel, set in present-day London, a public relations exec struggles to find peace after the death of his beloved wife and finds some solace in his friends.
Just as Ollie Bridge is about to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills with vodka, his friends cajole him into attending a poetry performance titled “They Them.” There, he meets the poet, a woman named Alex, but it turns out that the meeting is a setup—an attempt by his pals to bring him back from the brink and return him to life, as it were. It appears to work—not only for Ollie, but for Alex, as well. Her husband, Sam, actually did commit suicide, leaving her as bereft as Ollie, whose own spouse, Eden, died of cancer. “They Them” features Alex and a life-size puppet that represents Sam; Alex is a ventriloquist, and as she trades quips onstage with the avatar of her dead husband, a pervasive creepiness takes hold. Claudia Ellis, known to her friends as “Claw,” is a physician who treated both Sam and Eden, who was her true friend, and she has a casual attitude when it comes to prescribing pills. Rounding out the cast is Sigismund, Claw’s first husband, a historian who left her for one of his students, and Patrick, who becomes Claw’s second husband. Readers learn that Patrick and Sigismund once had a fling, as did Claw and Ollie; it’s clear that this is a group of friends with benefits.
Cacoyannis writes very well on a small canvas. His previous works have had elements of satire, though it may be a stretch to see this latest as having such; these characters appear, at least, to be very serious as the author puts them through their paces—perhaps too serious. But maybe that is the point: They’re all navel-gazers, well meaning most of the time, but self-absorbed nonetheless. They demonstrate a panoply of sexual variety, and bed-hopping is a recurring motif, with so-and-so being unfaithful with what’s-his/her-name with abandon. But to offset this, they all seem to be compulsive confessors; in fact, transgression followed by confession is shown to be a social tactic among this group, a strategy for leverage. Still, this is Ollie’s story and, true to the title, readers get such soliloquies as this: “Broken by the addition, I have now become one minus two: a subtraction—in amongst the blackened silhouettes, a hollow displacement of matter.” It’s no wonder his friends thought it prudent to get him a girlfriend. The preceding quote is just the first of many arithmetical maunderings. Still, readers will come to like Ollie and care about the outcome of his new love with Alex, which holds real promise. The story closes with Ollie and Claw in a kind of autumnal mood as old, genuine friends lob insights to one another like players in a slow-motion tennis match.
A rather strange but skillfully written study of a group of friends doing their best to get by.Pub Date: Feb. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9798873338832
Page Count: 271
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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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