A deeply emotional story about the Indian diaspora.
In Seeripat’s novel, a desperate Indian woman on the run with her two small children pays a steep price to keep her family safe from the horrors of indentured servitude.
It’s the late 1800s, and the only chance that Shivali Tewari and her family have at survival lies far away on a South African sugar cane plantation in Port Natal (now Durban), where they hope to find work as laborers. Fleeing the misogyny of her native Indian village of Ishapur, Shivali lives only to protect her daughter, Uma, and son, Hari. Although she’s plagued by guilt after killing her violent husband, Shivali will kill again if she must. For weeks, the family bears the oppressive confinement of the holding yard, waiting for the S.S.Umzimkulu to finally fulfill its quota of cheap human labor and set sail for the new land. However, the ship is a nightmarish place where “fights among men and the rape of women and men were regular events with consequences that would haunt us forever.” Themes of brutality are contrasted with those of familial love and kindness throughout Seeripat’s often moving saga. Shivali, Uma, Hari, and newly adopted members of their ragtag family are sent to Thompson’s Farm upon arrival in Port Natal, and they spend the next 10 years attempting to pursue lives of meaning and purpose under the yoke of institutionalized racism and colonial degradation. Seeripat is especially effective at relating the family’s grim odyssey by alternating between the first-person perspectives of Shivali, Uma, and Hari; at one point, for instance, Uma reminds readers, “The English didn’t really want women on the plantations. They were scared we would have babies and then there would be more Brown people than white ones in Natal. Imagine the horror of Brown people taking over!” Shivali’s inner turmoil is truly heartbreaking, and Uma’s unlikely romance with the plantation owner’s son, Richard, is rendered with all the beauty and ugliness that their world has to offer.
A deeply emotional story about the Indian diaspora.Pub Date: April 12, 2024
ISBN: 9798989650927
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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