Superb graphic art meets an exceedingly odd tale, and to wonderful ends.
A collection of the six issues (plus supplement) to date of Nilsen’s hallucinatory graphic novel.
A humanlike figure, bound to a rock in the faraway mountains, is visited daily by an eagle that eats its liver. The process starts all over the next day. It’s the tale of Prometheus, of course, though Nilsen calls him “The Prisoner.” The eagle is talkative, and a good chess player, though the Prisoner is better: “It’s your move,” he tells the eagle. “Your queen is under threat.” The whole world is under threat, as it happens, thanks to humans and their insatiable ways. Says another visitor, Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus, portrayed as a sort of antelope and bent on ending the human desecration of the planet, “I am acting not only to save the ten thousand species I most love, or to end the decimation of all life. I am acting to end its perversion to human ends.” There are humans aplenty in Nilsen’s tale, and most are indeed up to no good: There’s a Russian soldier of fortune, for instance, who’s bound up in intrigue, and a cult devoted to the god Omega, and a mysterious kid named Teddy Roosevelt who converses with, yes, a stuffed bear. Chickens talk, gods talk, bad guys talk, the young world-saver named Astrid talks. Only a monkey that bounces around at points in the tale keeps shtum, but one has the sense that the monkey knows much more than it’s letting on. The whole narrative has a decidedly otherworldly sense to it, a kind of Classics Illustrated run amok, and it’s utterly beguiling: throw in a magic cube to complicate the storyline, and while it may not make much sense, it doesn’t really have to if the reader suspends disbelief long enough to listen to an eagle trying to make sense of an iPhone.
Superb graphic art meets an exceedingly odd tale, and to wonderful ends.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781524747206
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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