Crisp and well constructed, if not especially emotionally resonant.
An all-American golden girl runs away from her small town to join a cult in Wisdom’s dreamy debut.
Two days before she will surely be crowned homecoming queen—how could it be otherwise?—Alice Lange, beloved and beautiful, the pride of the neighborhood, is approached by a stranger. She's reading on her front porch swing when it happens, when the man, who is handsome and older, takes her picture with a “ravenousness she liked.” They will see each other again, the man tells Alice, and this turns out to be true: Alice won’t go to the dance after all. Alice will get in the man’s truck and she'll be gone, and when the police come, it will be clear she has left voluntarily. The novel, narrated by an all-knowing chorus of the neighborhood mothers, moves between Alice’s new life off the grid with the man and his followers and the small town shaken by her disappearance. The man, who is called Wesley, is the charismatic leader of a doomsday cult—the novel is not especially specific about the ideological details, but they will, someday, build a new civilization from the world’s ashes—for which he has recruited a small band of young women, most recently Alice. Alice, who remains, in her golden perfection, a sort of girl-shaped place holder, is easily swept along. For the town, life goes on, but her absence is a constant reminder of its precariousness. “That’s what we’ve learned from Alice Lange,” the mothers explain. “Sometimes the darkness wins.” Propulsive and haunting, if psychologically thin, the novel is a fever dream of familiar tropes: the idyllic suburb, the chosen girl, the allure of escape, the cult, the undercurrent of violence. The novel doesn’t seem to offer any particular insight into these things—it proceeds about how you’d expect—but Wisdom hits each note with perfect precision.
Crisp and well constructed, if not especially emotionally resonant.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06299-614-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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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