Lowry’s novel offers humor, sharp social commentary, startling twists, and a satisfying conclusion.
In Lowry’s novel, a repressed politician’s wife finds unexpected strength in the story of her long-lost great-great-aunt.
When Rachel Jackson’s mother passes on to her an heirloom—a small blue trunk that belonged to her “crazy” great-great aunt Marit, who was never spoken of by her family—going through the old papers within it to learn more about Marit seems like a pleasant distraction. Why do the contents include a napkin from a notorious speakeasy, a hank of horsehair, and a news clipping about gangsters? Rachel is secretly miserable, despite her privileged life. Her husband Blake, a conservative Arizona congressman, is running for reelection, and she feels stifled playing the part of perfect political wife. Her situation further darkens when she accidentally finds a woman’s scarf—not her own—in Blake’s computer bag while looking for a rubber band. The narrative shifts: Carrying all her worldly possessions in a blue trunk, Marit Sletmo emigrates from Norway to Wisconsin with her older brother Jorgan and sister Ingrid in 1904 as a naive 17-year-old. Jorgan, her legal guardian, plans to marry her off to a self-absorbed, rich older man to fund his own ambitions. When her budding friendship with an unconventional older woman causes her fiance to break their engagement, Jorgan has her declared insane (and in a time when almost anything could be diagnosed as “hysteria,” that’s appallingly easy to do). He fears that Marit might reveal a damaging secret about him. (“We have decided you should go away…we think it’s the best thing for you.”) The perspective shifts between Rachel’s first-person point of view and Marit’s close third person, an effective way of highlighting the immediacy of the present and the distance of the past. Both women are compelling, sympathetic, and memorable characters. Their interwoven stories reveal unexpected parallels between their very different lives and personalities as each finds the inner strength needed to break free from captivity—Rachel figuratively and Marit literally. Inspired in part by the life of the author’s own ancestor, Marit’s tale will resonate long after readers finish the book.
Lowry’s novel offers humor, sharp social commentary, startling twists, and a satisfying conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798888244418
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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
SEEN & HEARD
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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